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Foreign travelers arrested in Japan following smash-and-grab robbery in Tokyo shopping mall

Casey Baseel 4 days ago
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Robbery took place at luxury wristwatch shopping hotspot for foreign tourists.

When international travelers come to Japan, they oftentimes want to cram a lot into their schedule. It’s understandable. Even with the weak yen making Japan travel more affordable than it’s been in decades, it’s still often a long flight to get here, and the logistics and scheduling involved mean you might not be back again for a while, so better see and do all you can, right?

That said, we’d strongly advise against the itinerary of two men from Chile who, within the course of a week, landed in Japan, robbed a store in broad daylight, fled halfway across the country, and then got arrested.

On August 21, Chilean nationals Pinya Guzman and Mansano Quesada arrived in Japan on a flight from Sydney. The next day, one of them made an account for an unmanned electric scooter rental network, and on the 23rd, rented a scooter in the vicinity of Tokyo’s Nakano Station, returning it just five minutes later, according to the system’s records. The two men then went to Nakano Broadway, a shopping center just a short walk away.

Nakano Broadway is a very eclectic indoor mall, famous for its selection of subculture and specialty shops. On the upper floors you’ll find stores filled with all sorts of classic anime merchandise and pop culture memorabilia, but the lower floors house a number of second-hand luxury watch stores. In recent years, these watch shops have begun attracting a lot of attention from foreign tourists, thanks to their wide selections of rare and otherwise desirable models, the meticulous care Japanese owners take of their luxury goods prior to selling them, and the favorable-to-foreigners exchange rate that lets travelers scoop up high-quality pieces at much lower prices than they could in their home countries.

During their visit to Nakano Broadway on August 23, the 23-year-old Guzman and 33-year-old Quesada were seen spending time inside a first-floor watch shop called Time Walker, though they didn’t purchase anything, but they did spot some things that they wanted. Two days later, on the 25th, Guzman and Quesada came back to the store, but instead of bringing cash to pay for the watches that had caught their eye, they brought a hammer. With Quesada acting as lookout, Guzman waited for an opportunity, and at roughly 11:50 a.m., he shattered one of the store’s glass showcases. The pair then snatched four watches, worth a combined total of roughly 203 million yen (US$1.28 million), and fled, with one man making his escape on foot and the other hopping on a rented electric scooter. After boarding a train at Nakano Station, Guzman and Quesada briefly returned to their lodgings in Tokyo’s Taito Ward, but then quickly got out of the city.

But while they got out of Tokyo, they did not get away with their crime. Two days later, Guzman and Quesada were in a rented vacation property in Osaka, half-way across the country from Tokyo, when they were paid an unexpected visit by law enforcement officials who had identified and tracked them down after examining security camera footage and placed the pair under arrest.

▼ Officials rolling up on the Osaka property

One of the stolen watches was found in their possession, and Guzman admitted to stealing “only one watch,” saying “I don’t know about the other three.” Quesada was marginally more forthcoming, telling investigators “We dropped the other three watches while we were running away.” It’s yet to be determined whether or not they actually did lose the remaining three pieces, though, as they said that their plan was to sell the watches elsewhere in Japan, then take the money home with them.

▼ Video showing Guzman and Quesada after being transported back to Tokyo and turned over to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police later in the day after being arrested in Osaka

This is a good spot to remember that, while stealing is never advisable, it’s really, really not advisable in Japan, because of how the Japanese legal system works. Japanese laws allow the practice of saitaiho, or “rearresting.” Basically, instead of the combo-meal approach of arresting you for all your related crimes at once, the Japanese police have the option of handling things in an a-la-carte or dim-sum style approach. So after you’ve been arrested for theft, you can then be rearrested, on a later date, for vandalism if you broke a display case to get to the items you stole. Did the store have to shut down for the day to clean up and talk to the police? That could be considered forced obstruction of business, another crime and grounds for another rearrest. Fleeing the scene of a crime? That could be arrest number four.

Arresting someone sequentially like this allows the police to repeatedly reset the number of days a person can be held in custody without a trial. Rearrests like this are typically done with no break in between them, either, with one period of pre-trial incarceration flowing directly into the next. With each arrest allowing the police to hold the individual for up to 23 days, unless someone manages to pull off a single crime in a sort of legal vacuum, they could easily be spending a month-plus in jail before ever going in front of a judge. With high-profile crimes committed by foreigners happening with greater frequency these days, there are growing cries for heavier punishment than the simple, swift deportation that’s been the norm in these kinds of situations until now, and if the Tokyo Metropolitan Police decide they’d like to lock Guzman and Quesada up for several weeks without having to deal with the complications of formally trying and convicting foreign citizens, they’ve got the means to do so.

Source: Nitele News, Mainichi Shimbun, FNN Prime Online, YouTube/ANNnewsCH
Top image: Pakutaso
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