Japan's Terror Threat

Nis

hi-Kawaguchi is a hardscrabble, working-class town on the outskirts of Tokyo. There are literally dozens of seen-better-days, commuter-line towns just like it dotting the sprawling megalopolis. Massage parlors, hostess clubs and soaplands line the streets around the dinky train station, and the odd reveler or two is still wandering around well into the morning, trying to shake off last night's indulgences or perhaps just waiting to resume them. It's the kind of place where disappointment is the default emotion and where Japan's much-hyped economic revival hasn't quite kicked in. "This used to be a tightly knit community," sighs shopkeeper Sumiko Shirai. "Now, it's the kind of place where people don't know, or even notice, their neighbors." But Shirai and her friends never imagined Nishi-Kawaguchi could become the kind of place where al-Qaeda terrorists might hang out. "There aren't even that many foreigners here," she says. "When I heard the news, I was shocked."

She wasn't alone. In a sweep that jolted the nation, police last week raided about 10 locations (including two homes in Nishi-Kawaguchi) and arrested five foreign men suspected to have been in contact with Lionel Dumont, a 33-year-old Frenchman believed to have ties to al-Qaeda. Dumont was arrested in Germany in December and extradited to France last month for crimes he was convicted of committing there in the 1990s while a member of a radical Islamist group known as the Roubaix gang. For now, four of the men—two from Bangladesh, one from Mali and another from India—are being held only on immigration violations, while another Bangladeshi has been charged with falsifying official documents. But the police are investigating whether Dumont, a French national of Algerian descent who lived in Japan on and off in 2002 and 2003, was setting up a terrorist ring in the country. The local press have reported that Dumont, who worked as a used-car exporter, opened a postal savings account in July 2002 and deposited or withdrew several thousands of dollars from his account about 45 times until his final departure from the country last September, though it remains unclear whether any of those transactions were suspect. The press also say Dumont made frequent phone calls to one of the arrested men, who received a series of large and as yet unexplained bank account deposits.

Until now, conventional wisdom held that Japan's foreign population was too small, tightly regulated and closely watched to pose any terror threat. Officials frequently bragged about the sophistication of their high-tech border controls, claiming they would be sure to snare any known unsavory characters at the port of entry. Those boasts withered last week, however, in the face of revelations that Dumont slipped undetected in and out of the country four times on a fake French passport, while also being on an international wanted list. The possibility of such infiltration has added credence to the single explicit threat made against Japan by a purportedly al-Qaeda-affiliated group last November for Tokyo's decision to deploy 550 troops to southern Iraq.

For the approximately 70,000 Muslims living in Japan, the widening probe is worrying for a different reason. At the Medina masjid one town over from Nishi-Kawaguchi, mosque chairman Raees Siddiqui, a 53-year-old Pakistani, is happy to chat about a possible backlash against Muslims due to the arrests, but he only has a few minutes: the 30-year resident of Japan, who runs a million-dollar used-car export business, says he has to be at the police station soon. No, he's not wanted for anything, or even questioning, he replies, simultaneously offended and amused at the suggestion. He requested the meeting with the police, he says, because he's concerned that the arrested men have already been convicted of being terrorists by the media before they have had their day in court. Siddiqui recalls meeting only one of the detainees, and that it was just for a few minutes about 18 months ago. Even so, he feels certain they are not terrorists. "Perhaps they overstayed their visas, but that is because they wanted to make more money for their families. They are not al-Qaeda. There is no al-Qaeda in Japan." That, of course, is for the authorities to determine, but what concerns Siddiqui the most is that the public might begin to see all Muslims in an unfavorable light: "If the media keeps this up, Japanese people will look at Muslims and say, 'Oh, he is al-Qaeda.'" And so the door to a country already famously ambivalent about immigrants could shut a little more.

That is already happening. The very day after the arrests, the government hiked the penalty for overstaying a visa tenfold, to about $27,000. It also prohibited foreigners who have been deported from re-entering the country for 10 years, twice as long as before. As Japan copes with a rapidly aging population, a major influx of foreign labor may well be the only way the nation can stay economically competitive. Yet many Japanese believe the immigration barriers aren't stringent enough, especially in the wake of the arrests. Tsuneo Taya is a tofu-shop owner in Nishi-Kawaguchi who often saw one of the recently detained men on the street, usually well-dressed and talking on his cell phone. He says the arrests have made him think twice about the delicate balance between immigration and security. "You don't want to discriminate," he says. "You don't want to be racist about it. On the other hand, it is a scary world out there."