Drug Smuggling Stories

The autobiographical books Midnight Express by Billy Hayes, The Damage Done by Warren Fellows and Mr Nice by Howard Marks offer fascinating insights into the consequences of drug smuggling, namely doing time in a foreign prison far away from friends and family and the impact that has on a person’s life. In all three cases the writers admit they were guilty of smuggling drugs, but what happens in cases where the guilt is less clear-cut?

Justice For Nick Baker is a site devoted to raising awareness of the trial and conviction of Nick Baker, a chef from England, who was arrested on drug smuggling charges at Tokyo’s Narita Airport in 2002. Baker maintained that he was tricked into bringing a suitcase through Customs by his travelling companion and was unaware that he was carrying drugs, but was found guilty and sentenced by a Japanese court to 14 years in prison with forced labour and a ¥5,000,000 fine. He continues to protest his innocence, and this website was set up by his family and supporters to keep people up-to-date about his situation.

Wikipedia (citing a Japan Today article by Mark Devlin) casts some doubt on his innocence, but whether you believe Baker or not is really incidental as the Justice For Nick Baker site now focuses more on the absurdities and unfairness of the Japanese judicial system. It seems the principal of being ‘innocent until proven guilty’ found in democratic countries may be inverted in Japan judging by the 99.97% conviction rate of Japanese Courts and trial by judge not jury, and the site also contains allegations of mistreatment of foreigners in Japanese prisons.

Other sites that focus on lengthy detention, unfair trials and mistreatment of prisoners in Japan include Chris Snell’s website and Amnesty International, while Wikipedia articles on Schappelle Corby and Chika Honda are interesting companion pieces to the Nick Baker article.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 16th, 2006 at 10:46 am and is filed under Uncategorized, Articles in English, Other Websites and blogs, Website Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.