The Tokyo High Court earlier this week rejected a U.S. request to extradite a medical researcher to face charges of industrial espionage in the United States. The court ruled that Mr. Takashi Okamoto, a former employee of the Japanese government-affiliated Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, or Riken, did not commit any offense that would warrant his handover. It was the first time that a Japanese court had turned down a U.S. extradition demand.
Mr. Okamoto was indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury in May 2001 on charges of stealing trade secrets -- including DNA samples on Alzheimer's disease -- from the Learner Research Institute of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Ohio, in July 1999 and taking some of those samples to Riken after leaving the U.S. laboratory. In 2002, the U.S. requested that Japan surrender him under a bilateral extradition treaty.
The high court determined, however, that Mr. Okamoto had no intention of profiting from the delivery of the samples to Riken. "There is no sufficient reason to suspect that he committed a crime (that would make him liable to extradition)," the court said. This represents a reasonable judgment.