During the final day of a murder trial, prosecutors on Wednesday told the court that Chinese investigators have located a crushed car in China's Hebei Province that is believed to contain the remains of the victim, a Japanese man slain in Saitama Prefecture.
Hiroshi Arai, 29, stands accused before the Saitama District Court of being involved in the February murder of Hiroshi Taniguchi, 41, in Kumagaya, Saitama Prefecture. Another man, Satoshi Fukuda, 24, is also on trial in the case.
Prosecutors demanded an unspecified prison term for Arai and a 13-year jail sentence for Fukuda as the trial drew to a close. The court is expected to rule on the case on Aug. 28.
The prosecutors said the remains were found June 27 along with a black belt and laundry bag.
The remains will soon be returned to Japan, they said.
Based on earlier confessions by some of the suspects accused of involvement in the crime, National Police Agency and Saitama Prefectural Police investigators went to China in late June to find the crushed car, which had been exported as scrap metal.
The Japanese investigators were accompanied and aided by their counterparts in China in the search.
According to police, Taniguchi, 41, was strangled in Kumagaya, just north of Tokyo, on Feb. 19 and put into the car, which was then crushed in a compactor.
Japanese investigators suspected that the car was among several hundred compacted vehicles sent to the Chinese port of Tianjin in Hebei Province in early March.
Seven people have been charged with murdering Taniguchi and other offenses, despite the lack of a body, and two have received prison sentences so far.