{"id":502376,"date":"2025-12-13T17:05:44","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T14:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reform.news\/?p=502376"},"modified":"2025-12-13T19:52:26","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T16:52:26","slug":"belarus-releases-japanese-political-prisoner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/belarus-releases-japanese-political-prisoner","title":{"rendered":"Belarus Releases Japanese Political Prisoner"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>Belarus has released Japanese citizen <b>Nakanishi Masatoshi<\/b>, CGTN America reported.<\/p>\n<p>On March 17, 2025, the Minsk City Court sentenced Nakanishi Masatoshi to seven years in a high-security penal colony and a fine of 500 base units (21,000 Belarusian rubles). He was found guilty under the article on intelligence activities (Article 358-1 of the Criminal Code). The trial was held behind closed doors.<\/p>\n<p>According to the prosecution, Nakanishi Masatoshi carried out intelligence activities from 2018 to 2024, cooperating with a special service, security body, and intelligence agency of a foreign state.<\/p>\n<p>Masatoshi had previously taught Japanese at Francysk Skaryna Homel State University. He was detained in July 2024, though this became public only on September 4.<\/p>\n<p>State television claimed that he had allegedly collected information on the socio-political situation in Belarus, the implementation of China\u2019s Belt and Road Initiative, the situation on the Belarusian-Ukrainian border, and filmed military infrastructure. Belarus\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that it was not refusing contacts with Tokyo regarding the case of the detained Japanese citizen.<\/p>\n<p>Reform.news analyzed the report about the Japanese \u201cspy\u201d aired on Belarusian state television and found that the KGB and state TV had manipulated the facts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Belarus has released Japanese citizen Nakanishi Masatoshi, CGTN America reported. On March 17, 2025, the Minsk City Court sentenced Nakanishi Masatoshi to seven years in a high-security penal colony and a fine of 500 base units (21,000 Belarusian rubles). He was found guilty under the article on intelligence activities (Article 358-1 of the Criminal Code). [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":502375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sharing_image":{"poster":"https:\/\/reform.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/693d99d085de1.jpg","width":1200,"height":630,"template":"691142dd","mode":"auto"},"_sharing_image_fieldset":{"dTVKfmI95PYT":"Belarus Releases Japanese Political Prisoner"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[142339,142338],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-502376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main","category-news"],"wps_subtitle":"","permalink_manager":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}