A member of a rightwing extremist group was sentenced Friday to a suspended eight-month prison term for burning the corporate flag of the Chugoku Shimbun newspaper.
According to the ruling by the Hiroshima District Court, 23-year-old Kazunori Tanimizu took down the flag in front of the head office of the Hiroshima-based newspaper and set it on fire with a lighter early Aug. 24, voicing fury that the paper's reports about rightist groups were biased.
The daily, known for its reports on promoting peace and a nuclear-free world, is one of the biggest local newspapers in Japan. It has a circulation of more than 700,000 in Hiroshima and surrounding prefectures.
Tanimizu sentence for damaging property was suspended for three years.