Tokyo police have sent documents to prosecutors for two male suspects in their 50s who have defamed three people on X, including a man who lost his wife and child in a high-profile car accident in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district.
One of the suspects, Hironori Ishibashi, 57, is a representative director of the Forensics Analysis Laboratory. According to the Fukuoka-based institute’s website, the suspect has been involved in more than 1,000 traffic accident analyses, commissioned by both police and courts. He has also appeared on television programs several times.
He is accused, along with an unnamed man in his 50s from Kawaguchi City, Saitama Prefecture, of defaming Takuya Matsunaga, 37, whose wife and daughter were killed by a speeding car in Ikebukuro in April 2019.
In its report, the police advised to ‘severely punish’ the perpetrator.
The anonymous suspect is a dispatch worker who co-hosted a livestream with Ishibashi. They allegedly made defamatory comments about Matsunaga on November 19, 2023, using X’s voice chat function and calling him “money-hungry” and “an idiot.”
They are also suspected of targeting Juri Ozawa, 43, head of a group of survivors of traffic crime victims, and Yoshinori Nakae, 60, who lost his daughter in a similar accident in Kameoka, Kyoto Prefecture, in 2012. They falsely claimed to have “had sexual relations with other survivors.”
Police launched an investigation after receiving complaints from the three victims.
In a joint statement issued Thursday afternoon, Matsunaga and the other victims said: “In this case, false statements were publicly presented as if they were true. We will continue to speak out to prevent further defamation and slander of crime victims.”
Translated by The Japan Times
