The Tokyo High Court on Wednesday repealed a lower court ruling ordering the state to pay a deported Iranian man 600,000 yen in compensation for abuse he suffered from guards at Fuchu Prison in western Tokyo.
The Tokyo District Court had found the forcible use of a psychotropic agent on Bahman Daneshian, 38, illegal, ordering the state to pay the compensation.
But presiding Judge Makoto Nemoto at the high court ruled it was "a legitimate therapeutic intervention to control the excited state of a prisoner," repealing the earlier order.
Daneshian was told by a senior prison guard that "All Iranians are liars," while being put in a leather manacle and detained in an isolation cell for more than 20 hours due to a violation of prison rules during his three-year imprisonment from the fall of 1993, the court said.
He was also injected with a psychotropic medicine when he staged a hunger strike in protest, it said.
Both the district and high courts said, "All the racist remarks and the long-term use of leather manacles are illegal, but the statute of limitations on the claims for compensation had expired."
The plaintiff, who was convicted of assault and deported to Iran following his release, had demanded the state pay 15 million yen in compensation.
Both Daneshian and the central government had appealed the district court ruling.