Tokyo police have arrested a 61-year-old man for allegedly registering a fake address to rent an internet server and on suspicions of involvement in a blog that alludes to child prostitution in Laos, sources said Thursday.
Hiroshi Kida, a part-time worker in the city of Kawachinagano in Osaka Prefecture, is suspected of providing a fake address and phone number when renting the server on Oct. 2, 2022.
He has denied the allegations, saying that he merely shared his address with a man who he came to know at a bar in Laos.
According to the Metropolitan Police Department, the blog in question contained text and photos suggestive of child prostitution in the Southeast Asian country.
The blog also had a link to a paywalled blog. Kida¡¯s bank account had a record of receiving some ?550,000 ($3,575), believed to be a revenue from the blog.
During a search on Kida¡¯s home in March last year, the police found the same photographs that had been posted on the blog stored on his computer and smartphone.
Kida has visited Laos 17 times, and some of the dates on the photos matched his visits.
The Japanese Embassy in Laos issued a statement in June last year to warn of the existence of web posts by Japanese nationals that allude to child prostitution in Laos. It warned the such acts are not only subject to crackdowns by Laotian authorities but also punishable under Japan¡¯s child prostitution and child pornography prohibition law as crimes committed abroad by Japanese nationals.
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