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Japan hopes to foil terrorists by taking visitors' fingerprints

Japan hopes to thwart potential terrorists from entering the country by fingerprinting and photographing all foreigners aged 16 or over on entry starting next month, an official said yesterday.

Only some permanent residents, diplomatic visitors and children under 16 will be exempt from the measures after the system goes into effect on Nov. 20, Immigration Bureau official Takumi Sato said.

Under the new system, all adults will be photographed and fingerprinted on arrival in Japan. Incoming aircraft and ship operators will also be obliged to provide passenger and crew lists before they arrive.

Immigration officials will run the images and data through a database of international terror and crime suspects as well as against domestic crime records.

People matching the data on file will be denied entry and deported.

"We hope the system will help keep terrorists out of the country, and also put at ease the minds of both the Japanese people and the foreigners who come here," Sato said.

The bureau plans to store the data for "a long time," Sato said, while refusing to disclose how long, citing security concerns.

Opponents of the new system say the measures amount to discrimination against foreigners and a violation of their right to privacy.

Tokyo's staunch support of the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and dispatch of forces to each region have raised concerns that Japan could become the target of deadly terror attacks.

Concerns about extremist incursions spiked when reports emerged in May 2004 that Lionel Dumont, a French citizen with suspected links to al-Qaeda and a history of violent crime, repeatedly entered Japan on a fake passport.

Dumont, who was later sentenced to 30 years in prison in France, was reportedly trying to set up a terror cell when he lived undisturbed in Japan in 2002 and 2003.
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