In 2008, two officials of Greenpeace Japan presented to prosecutors what they described as evidence of a Japanese whaler's embezzlement of whale meat and asked them to investigate.
Instead of indicting the whaler and his colleagues, prosecutors charged the two environmental activists with theft and trespassing.
This, in essence, is what the so-called whale meat trial is all about. The Aomori District Court will hand down its ruling Monday. The prosecutors are demanding that both Junichi Sato and Toru Suzuki spend 18 months in prison.