Investigators also checked the plane for fingerprints, the report said.
In Beirut, the Japanese government has begun discussing Mr. Ghosn’s escape with Lebanese officials. On Friday, its ambassador met with Lebanon’s minister for presidential affairs, according to the state-run National News Agency, and discussed “the ramifications” of Japan’s formal request through Interpol, known as a red notice, for help apprehending the former executive.
No details were released, and both sides agreed to maintain contact, the report said. Lebanon has insisted that it played no role in Mr. Ghosn’s escape.
Mr. Ghosn’s dramatic escape from Japan has put the country’s legal system itself on trial, at least in the realm of public opinion. “I have not fled justice,” he said in a statement last week. “I have escaped injustice and political persecution.”
Japanese defense attorneys have long complained that the system is stacked against them. Prosecutors win 99 percent of their cases. They enjoy broad powers to interview suspects without the presence of their lawyers. And many legal experts say the system depends too much on confessions extracted under heavy pressure.
In that environment, Mr. Ghosn’s case presented a quandary for prosecutors, said Steven Davidoff Solomon, a professor at the University of California Berkeley School of Law.
“Japan has a system where everyone pleads guilty,” he said.
Before making bail, Mr. Ghosn, 65, was held in solitary confinement with limited access to his lawyers. Once released, he was not allowed to meet with his wife and was forbidden to use the internet outside his lawyers’ offices. Surveillance cameras watched him come and go from his Tokyo residence.
“The restrictions they were putting on him were extraordinary,” Professor Davidoff Solomon said, “for someone who is not a terrorist and not accused of a violent crime like a mass murder.”
Source : Nytimes
