Three years after someone leaked documents on its counterterrorism investigations onto the Internet, Tokyo police have reached a dead end in their efforts to find the culprit while some Muslim residents who served as informants continue to live in fear with their identities exposed.
With the statute of limitations for filing criminal charges having expired at midnight Monday, the incident has become a major embarrassment for the Metropolitan Police Department's public security bureau.
Critics have zeroed in on the bureau's vulnerability to Net crimes and its carelessness in controlling information while condemning its inability to hunt down the perpetrator, whom the police suspect was someone within the organization.