US investigating soldier in Japan

By MARI YAMAGUCHI, Associated Press Writer


The U.S. military is investigating an American soldier who had been accused of raping a woman on Japan's southern island of Okinawa before Japanese authorities dropped the case, an army official said Wednesday.

An army-appointed investigator began the military equivalent of a pretrial probe on Monday into the allegations against a 25-year-old specialist assigned to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, Army spokeswoman Amanda Kraus said.

The soldier, who is accused of assaulting the woman in February in a hotel room, is in custody on base but is not facing formal charges on any of the allegations, she said.

In May, Japanese prosecutors in Okinawa dismissed charges against the soldier after finding insufficient evidence of violence and intimidation in the case. Army investigators have pursued the case since.

The next step in the military legal process is a preliminary hearing by an independent officer, she said.

The army has 120 days to decide whether to formally press all or part of the charges and hold a court martial, or dismiss the case entirely, she said.

Offenses against Japanese females involving U.S. troops have sparked anger in Japan over the U.S. military and its 50,000-strong presence, most of them on the southern island, about 1,000 miles southwest of Tokyo.

In May, a U.S. court martial found a 38-year-old Marine, initially accused of raping a 14-year-old Japanese girl February in Okinawa, guilty of a lesser charge of abusive sexual conduct and sentenced him to four years in prison.

A U.S. military tribunal in Iwakuni, southwestern Japan, sentenced four Marines to prison for gang-assaulting a 20-year-old woman in the city of Hiroshima in October, in separate rulings earlier this year.

Ellie