Nick protested he had been duped by a traveling companion, James Prunier, but Japanese police allowed Prunier to leave the country without questioning him.

While Nick was spending some 10 months in solitary confinement for apparently "refusing to confess", it happened that Prunier was arrested in Belgium for allegedly tricking three other British travelers into smuggling drugs. (The "Mules" were released by Belgian authorities without charges). Nick's defence attorney requested that the facts of the Belgian case be admitted as evidence, but presiding Judge Kenji Kadoya, who in more than a decade on the bench has never found a single defendant "not guilty", refused this motion at the request of the prosecution. Instead, in June 2003, handing-down almost double what one might expect for murder in Japan, Kadoya sentenced Nick to 14 years in prison with hard labor, largely on the basis of testimony Nick was made to sign (written in Japanese, a language he does not understand).

Nick protested that the testimony was inaccurately translated, and is currently appealing the verdict, a process that could take up to one year.

Nick's family and supporters have put a web site up in the desperate hope that the Japanese authorities, aware that the world is watching, will admit relevant evidence and provide Nick with a proper hearing during the appeal, and that justice will prevail. Otherwise, Nick will not see his son again until he is fully grown.

• Want to know more about the facts of this case?
• A Brief Overview of Detention & Criminal Procedures in Japan, the Prison System, and the Window for Abuses to Occur
• Japan Today Forum: Japan-based English-language site -- a new discussion on Nick's petition and the case in general
• Write to Nick at: Tokyo Detention Centre - 1-35-1 Kosuge, Katsushika-ku. Tokyo. Japan. 124-0001

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