Prosecutors on Friday indicted a senior officer in the Maritime Self-Defense Force on charges of passing defense secrets to a Russian military attache in Tokyo.
Lt. Cmdr. Shigehiro Hagisaki, 38, a researcher at the Defense Agency's National Institute for Defense Studies, was charged with violating the Self-Defense Forces Law, which prohibits SDF members from divulging classified security information.
According to police, Hagisaki allegedly gave between 30 and 40 copies of classified MSDF documents to Viktor Bogatenkov, 44, on at least 10 occasions between September 1999 and August.