The report was troubling: in Japan, where immigration bureaucrats pride themselves on keeping tight controls on foreigners, a French fugitive with a long history of violent crime and suspected terror links slipped into the country and lived quietly as a car dealer.
The media accounts of Lionel Dumont's seamless entry into Japan -- so far not publicly confirmed by authorities -- have rattled Japanese security officials and raised questions about their ability to block infiltration by potential terrorists and other criminals.
The Dumont story comes as concerns rise in Japan that the country is considered a target for terrorist attack because of its solid support for the US-led invasion of Iraq. Tokyo has deployed hundreds of soldiers in southern Iraq on a humanitarian mission, despite public uneasiness about security.
Reflecting the jitters, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi ordered authorities on Wednesday to boost security in public areas and at immigration points. The head of the Public Security Intelligence Agency, Takashi Oizumi, issued an urgent warning to his colleagues on Thursday.
"I want you to work at gathering information as if Japan were at risk of being the target of a terror attack tomorrow," he said during a briefing, without making a reference to Dumont.
In a country with a tiny foreign community -- less than 2 percent of the 127 million population -- and already in the midst of a crackdown on foreigner-committed crime, the reported ease of Dumont's entry is startling.
French authorities have long associated Dumont, a Muslim, with the violent Roubaix gang in northern France suspected of ties with Islamic radicals. He escaped a raid in 1996 that left some members dead, though French authorities say they don't have enough evidence to charge the group with links to terrorists.
He headed to Bosnia to fight in the army alongside fellow Mus-lims, was arrested and convicted of killing a Bosnian police officer during a robbery and sentenced to 20 years in prison. He escaped in 1999 and vanished.
Dumont was convicted in absentia and sentenced to life in prison by a French court in 2001.
According to Japanese media accounts, Dumont used a fake French passport to enter Japan in July 2002 and worked as a car salesman in Niigata. He reportedly made several trips to Europe and Asia before leaving Japan the last time for Malaysia in September last year.
Dumont is believed to have provided money and equipment to Islamic radicals, including al-Qaeda, and may have been in Japan to set up a terror cell, the reports said. Kyodo News service reported yesterday that phone records show he continued to make phone calls to Japan after leaving.
Dumont was arrested in Germany in December and was extradited to France on Tuesday.
Many in Japan are shocked that a man with such a history could slip through controls. He was reportedly listed on Interpol's Web site, and Ahmed Ressam, the Algerian convicted in the US of planning to bomb the Los Angeles airport during millennium celebrations, has been linked to the Roubaix gang.
The Asahi newspaper said Dumont evaded Japanese authorities by simply taking an alias.
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