A former Self-Defense Forces member has been arrested for allegedly using a fake visitor's pass to enter the Defense Agency headquarters in Tokyo.
The agency said Friday the 54-year-old man, previously suspected of espionage, is suspected of entering the agency premises in Shinjuku Ward around 3:20 p.m. Wednesday by presenting a fake pass to a security guard. The agency has withheld his name.
He was arrested on the spot by the Ground Self-Defense Force police unit.
The GSDF police searched the man's office in Shinjuku Ward on Friday.
The man used to have a real visitor's pass because he ran a restaurant at the agency after leaving the SDF, and his work at an aviation magazine involved visits, it said.
But he returned the pass to the agency after Tokyo police sent papers on him to prosecutors in September on suspicion of falsifying official documents of his company.
Police questioned him last year for allegedly providing internal agency documents to embassy officials of foreign countries while he was an executive of an agency-affiliated organization.
The documents involved agency policies on contingency measures that were prepared for Japanese lawmakers. Police later dropped the case, the agency said.