Japan will extradite a 43-year-old Japanese researcher to United States custody nearly three years after Washington charged him with stealing genetic research material, news reports said Thursday.
Justice Minister Daizo Nozawa will begin procedures as early as this month to transfer Takashi Okamoto, indicted on industrial espionage charges in the United States in 2001, the Yomiuri Shimbun and Kyodo News reported.
The Tokyo High Court is expected to approve Okamoto's extradition after carrying out a two-month examination of the case, they said, quoting police sources.
The US government has asked Japan to transfer Okamoto, a former laboratory team leader at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research or RIKEN in Japan.
Okamoto and another Japanese researcher were indicted by a grand jury in Cleveland, Ohio, charged with the alleged theft of DNA samples and cell line reagents and constructs from the Cleveland Clinic Foundation (CCF) in July 1999, when the two were working at the institute.
Okamoto, who returned to Japan at the time of the indictment, also faces charges of stealing trade secrets that were the property of the Cleveland foundation, and transporting stolen research abroad. Okamoto has said he is not guilty because the material is valueless, Kyodo said.
Under the Japan-US criminal extradition treaty, each country is supposed to transfer a suspect facing one year or longer in jail.
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