On April 8, the police found out that a Turkish national and self-proclaimed demolition worker (20), who was arrested by Saitama Prefectural Police for sexually assaulting a junior high school girl, was on provisional release while applying for refugee status. The man is a Kurdish-Turkey National and raised in Japan, and is said to be a second-generation immigrant.
According to investigations, the man was arrested on April 7 on charges including non-consensual sexual assault of a teenage female student from Tokyo in a car parked in a convenience store parking lot in Kawaguchi City, Saitama at around 10:30pm on January 13.
The police says the man came to Japan as a child, relying on his father who had arrived earlier, and attended local primary and junior high schools. He stated that after graduation he helped out in the family demolition business. The man and his father were in the process of applying for refugee status and had been temporarily released from detention in an immigration detention facility on provisional release. His home was in Saitama City but neighboring the northern part of Kawaguchi City.
The man decided to go for a drive with a group of junior high school girls from Tokyo, whom he met through social media, and a Japanese man. The girls thought they were going to Yokohama, but the car went straight from Tokyo to Kawaguchi City. The girls tried to escape by communicating with each other on their smartphones in the car, but they were dropped off near the convenience store where the crime took place, leaving only the victim in the car.
The man denies the charge, saying that he played with a Japanese girl, but didn’t assault her. The police are investigating through a Turkish interpreter.
In Kawaguchi City, friction between some Kurds and local residents has surfaced in recent years.
