Nearly 40 years after he allegedly left his Army unit and defected to North Korea, Sergeant Charles Jenkins surrendered to US military authorities in Japan yesterday.
Looking frail but determined, Jenkins, accompanied by his Japanese wife and two North Korea-born daughters, stood at attention and saluted as he was received by military police at the gate of this base just south of Tokyo.
"Sir, I'm Sergeant Jenkins and I'm reporting," he said.
"You are now under the control of the US Army," Lieutenant Colonel Paul Nigara told him in response.
Army officials said Jenkins, now 64, would be put back on active duty, issued an ID card and given a uniform and haircut pending legal action.
His reprocessing back into the Army was expected to take a week or so.
No date has yet been determined for his court martial, which was expected to be held in Camp Zama. The court martial was expected to take five or six days.
He'll be treated with dignity and fairness, said Army spokesman Major John Amberg.
Jenkins is charged with defecting to the North, where he lived for 39 years, and faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted. While in the North, he made propaganda broadcasts, played devilish Americans in anti-US films and taught English at a school for spies.
The North Carolina native is widely expected to strike a plea bargain with military authorities to avert imprisonment. He has met several times in recent weeks with an Army-appointed attorney to prepare his case.
The attorney also accompanied Jenkins to Camp Zama yesterday.
"I expect we have a lot more to face in the days to come," Jenkins' wife, Hitomi Soga, said as she left a Tokyo hotel where Jenkins had been under medical care since July.
"But we hope that the four of us can live together as soon as possible," she said.
Jenkins' fate has become the focus of intense interest in Japan because of Soga, who was one of more than a dozen Japanese citizens abducted by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s and taken to North Korea.
She and Jenkins met soon after she arrived in the North in 1978. Soga was allowed to return to Japan after a historic Japan-North Korea summit in Pyongyang in 2002, but Jenkins and the couple's daughters remained in the North until this summer.
Soga's plight has inspired widespread sympathy here. Tokyo arranged a reunion of the family in Indonesia in July, and then convinced Jenkins to come to Japan for treatment for ailments linked to an operation he had in North Korea.
Jenkins has not addressed the charges against him.
END OF AN ERA: The vote brings the curtain down on 20 years of socialist rule, which began in 2005 when Evo Morales, an indigenous coca farmer, was elected president A center-right senator and a right-wing former president are to advance to a run-off for Bolivia’s presidency after the first round of elections on Sunday, marking the end of two decades of leftist rule, preliminary official results showed. Bolivian Senator Rodrigo Paz was the surprise front-runner, with 32.15 percent of the vote cast in an election dominated by a deep economic crisis, results published by the electoral commission showed. He was followed by former Bolivian president Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga in second with 26.87 percent, according to results based on 92 percent of votes cast. Millionaire businessman Samuel Doria Medina, who had been tipped
ELECTION DISTRACTION? When attention shifted away from the fight against the militants to politics, losses and setbacks in the battlefield increased, an analyst said Recent clashes in Somalia’s semi-autonomous Jubaland region are alarming experts, exposing cracks in the country’s federal system and creating an opening for militant group al-Shabaab to gain ground. Following years of conflict, Somalia is a loose federation of five semi-autonomous member states — Puntland, Jubaland, Galmudug, Hirshabelle and South West — that maintain often fractious relations with the central government in the capital, Mogadishu. However, ahead of elections next year, Somalia has sought to assert control over its member states, which security analysts said has created gaps for al-Shabaab infiltration. Last week, two Somalian soldiers were killed in clashes between pro-government forces and
Ten cheetah cubs held in captivity since birth and destined for international wildlife trade markets have been rescued in Somaliland, a breakaway region of Somalia. They were all in stable condition despite all of them having been undernourished and limping due to being tied in captivity for months, said Laurie Marker, founder of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, which is caring for the cubs. One eight-month-old cub was unable to walk after been tied up for six months, while a five-month-old was “very malnourished [a bag of bones], with sores all over her body and full of botfly maggots which are under the
BRUSHED OFF: An ambassador to Australia previously said that Beijing does not see a reason to apologize for its naval exercises and military maneuvers in international areas China set off alarm bells in New Zealand when it dispatched powerful warships on unprecedented missions in the South Pacific without explanation, military documents showed. Beijing has spent years expanding its reach in the southern Pacific Ocean, courting island nations with new hospitals, freshly paved roads and generous offers of climate aid. However, these diplomatic efforts have increasingly been accompanied by more overt displays of military power. Three Chinese warships sailed the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand in February, the first time such a task group had been sighted in those waters. “We have never seen vessels with this capability