Police are questioning a 26-year-old Japanese Muslim on suspicion of trying to join Islamic State extremists in Syria, news reports and the top Japanese government spokesman said yesterday.
The student at Hokkaido University had reportedly planned to fly to the region this week to join the group formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
He told police that he “was planning to travel to Syria to join Islamic State to work as a fighter,” the Mainichi Shimbun and other news outlets reported.
He reportedly hatched the plan after spotting a job advertisement posted at a second-hand bookshop in Tokyo. The poster, which was shown on Japanese public broadcaster NHK, directed people interested in working in Syria to the shop clerk.
The same poster said a monthly wage of 15,000 yuan (US$2,400) was payable for people “not afraid of violence” to work in China’s Uighur Autonomous Region in northwest Xinjiang Province.
Uighurs are the mainly Muslim inhabitants of the area. Beijing is facing mounting violence there, which it has blamed on separatists who it says have been radicalized by foreign-based terror groups.
Most academics are skeptical of China’s claims, with some saying that Beijing exaggerates the threat to justify its law enforcement measures in the region.
No Chinese language ability was necessary, the advert said. There was no explanation of what the work entailed.
Hundreds of mostly young men have traveled from Europe and North America to join forces with the brutal group of terrorists, which has declared an Islamic “caliphate.” This is thought to be the first attempt by a Japanese.
Japan has a tiny Muslim population; most are recent immigrants.
Detectives are also investigating the advertiser, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said, without giving details of their identity.
A bookstore employee was quoted as saying: “I introduced several people to a former university professor of Islamic law.”
The academic denied advising anyone to join the militants, the Asahi Shimbun newspaper said, without identifying them.
The relationship between the bookstore and the advertiser was not immediately clear.
A police spokesman declined to comment on the case.
“We are aware that police are investigating the case based on criminal law, but we decline to comment further as it is still under investigation,” Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters.
Under Japanese law, it is illegal to prepare or plot “to wage war against a foreign state in a personal capacity,” Kyodo News news agency reported.
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