<figure id="attachment_229706" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 3648px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-229706"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="e1dde420"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2022/02/RIMG0264-1.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-229706" class="wp-caption-text">Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia, the site of Miko&#8217;s arrest.</figcaption></figure>
 In recent years, only one Japanese woman has been sentenced to death for drug smuggling.
 She is Miko, a former nurse from Aomori Prefecture. She was 2009 She was convicted of smuggling about 5,000 kilograms of narcotics through customs at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia in 2009.3.5 kilograms of methamphetamine. In 2009, she was sentenced to death for bringing in about 5 kilograms of methamphetamine through customs at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia. Following Part 1, I would like to take a look at the path that led to Miko&#8217;s death sentence.
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<a href="https://friday.kodansha.co.jp/article/229693"> Part 1: &#8220;Sentenced to Death in a Foreign Country&#8221;: The Shocking Background</a>
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 It was a few months after the visit to the Malaysian prison that I met Miko&#8217;s mother in Aomori Prefecture.
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 According to the mother, Miko was spent her teenage years in Aomori Prefecture. According to her mother, Miko had spent her teenage years in Aomori Prefecture, and started working at a hospital in the Kanto region after getting her nursing license. Since then, she had been living in the Kanto area and only came back to Aomori once in a while for Obon and New Year holidays.
 Miko liked to travel abroad and went to many countries. Sometimes she would give me souvenirs she bought in other countries. They had never talked about marriage, so they thought she was just living her life as she pleased.
 When the news of Miko&#8217;s arrest came out in the media, she hadn&#8217;t even heard about it. Reporters came to her house and asked to talk to her, but she didn&#8217;t even know where Malaysia was in the first place. It was all I could do to keep my head down and apologize.
 After the commotion of the arrest had died down, a woman claiming to be a friend of Miko sent me some of her personal belongings. Apparently, Miko, who was in Malaysia, contacted Woman A and asked her to organize Miko&#8217;s apartment in Tokyo and send her belongings to her parents&#8217; house.
<h2>Someone Deleted the Computer Data</h2>
 However, something strange became apparent here. Most of the data on the laptop in the apartment in Tokyo had been erased. It must have been the work of Woman A or someone else. Was there something inconvenient about the deletion?
 In addition, several letters were found in the luggage, which included correspondence with a woman B in the detention center. It turned out that this woman, B, had been arrested at Narita International Airport on suspicion of smuggling methamphetamine shortly before the Malaysian incident.
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 What on earth is going on here? I decided to contact Woman A to find out.
 Although she was reluctant to accept my request for an interview, she agreed to talk to me at a karaoke bar in Tokyo under the promise that she would never reveal her identity.
 From the beginning, Woman A&#8217;s behavior was bizarre. As soon as we entered the karaoke bar, she began to shake and shake and asked us how we knew her and what we knew about her and to what extent.
 After two rounds of interviews, Woman A finally confided that she had gone on an overseas trip with Miko and Woman B, who was under arrest. The purpose of the trip was to work as a luggage carrier. The details are not disclosed, but she said that there was a man involved and that they could get paid if they took care of the luggage there and brought it back to Japan. The amount of money was several hundred thousand yen each time.
 However, one day, Woman B was suddenly arrested at Narita International Airport. Woman A got scared and left the group. However, it seems that Miko continued to work as a luggage carrier. It was some time later that she was arrested in Malaysia.
 After the incident in Malaysia, Miko contacted Woman A and asked her to clean up her room. So she did as she was told and sent the rest of her belongings to her parents&#8217; house in Aomori.
 When I heard this story, I thought that Miko was carrying illegal drugs on purpose. I later found out about the existence of this drug smuggling organization. They had a number of Japanese women just like her and sent them abroad to work as &#8220;luggage carriers&#8221;.
 How in the world did a nurse come to be connected with such a drug smuggling organization? This question arose in my mind, but I would never know unless I asked Miko herself.
 At this time, I had received a request from Miko. I needed to make money to fight the trial, so she asked me to cash out my savings and financial products to pay for it. Of course, I had no right to do that. So I decided to tell my mother about it.
 Thinking of her daughter&#8217;s sake, the mother explained the situation to the financial institution and made a reasonable amount of cash. With that money, she prepared to fight the trial.
 The mother asked me to take her to Malaysia to see Miko in prison. I respected her opinion and decided to go to Malaysia to talk to her again.
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead="Miko's trial comes to a shocking conclusion."></div>
 When we arrived in Malaysia, we met with the lawyer and then went to the prison to meet with Miko. Since there was a time limit, we finished the tearful interview with the mother in five minutes and then went to the prison for the remaining 15 minutes. I decided to spend the remaining 15 minutes or so on fact-finding.
 I confided in her everything I had learned from my interviews in Japan and told her that I wanted her to tell me the truth. The lawyer told me that the death sentence would not be overturned if I made the same arguments as in the first trial. Then we have to find out what the facts were first. If there was another main culprit, that would have to be clarified at the second trial.
 Miko&#8217;s mother begged her to tell the truth, and with tears streaming down her face, she opened her heavy mouth.
 I understand. I will tell you the truth. I didn&#8217;t know I was involved in a crime at first, and I didn&#8217;t know what I was carrying until the end. But I was being paid a lot of money, so I knew it was something I shouldn&#8217;t be doing. So it was only when I was arrested that I found out that the contents were methamphetamine.
 According to the story, it was true that she had worked as a nurse at a hospital after moving from Aomori to Kanto. However, when she was working at a hospital, she was told by a senior nurse, woman B, that there was a part-time job with good conditions. The job was to go abroad, take care of luggage, and bring it back to Japan. She was told that she could earn several hundred thousand yen per trip.
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<h2>I was too scared to find out about it.</h2>
<figure id="attachment_229696" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 480px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-229696"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="0dc382e8"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2022/02/1467272403372.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-229696" class="wp-caption-text">The Malaysian court that sentenced Miko.</figcaption></figure>
 Miko knew it was a shady business, but she had been working as a nurse as well as a night job without telling the hospital. Her sense of money and common sense must have been numbed there. He decided to take a part-time job at the suggestion of Woman B.
 She would later learn that the man who ran the smuggling organization had a sexual relationship with her. The man was probably taming her for money and sex. So Woman B approached Miko and other nurses she knew and formed a group to work part-time.
 However, Woman B was arrested at Narita International Airport first. After that, the organization cut off Woman B, and Woman A and the others became scared and fled. However, Miko continues to work part-time for some reason. So it was true that she was arrested when she carried a suitcase from Dubai to Malaysia.
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 She said.
 I was afraid to know what was in the suitcase. I thought it was drugs, or a gun, or something scary. I knew that, but I kept doing it because I was no good. It&#8217;s too late now, but I&#8217;m sorry.&#8221;
 He was cut off from his organization, from his friends, and only after being sentenced to death in a foreign land did he realize his indiscretion.
 The lawyer changed the policy of fighting in the trial after hearing these stories.
 He gathered testimonies and evidence from Miko&#8217;s friends, revealed that there was a criminal organization, that Miko did not know the contents of the package, and that she was remorseful, and decided to appeal for extenuating circumstances.
 However, the reality was harsh. First of all, woman B, who had been arrested in Japan, cut Miko off, claiming that she had nothing to do with the Malaysian case. The same was true for the rest of her friends.
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead="And then the death penalty..."></div>
 All the people she had trusted disappeared as if they had turned their back on her.
 In addition, the lawyer who had been in charge of Miko suddenly lost his life in an accident. As a result, there was no one who understood Miko, and she had to search for a lawyer from scratch.
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 In the midst of all this, the second trial was held, and the death sentence was handed down there as well. Then, six years after his arrest 15 In 2003, six years after his arrest, the Malaysian Federal Court (Supreme Court) upheld the first and second trials and confirmed the death sentence.
 On the day the death penalty was confirmed, I was sitting in the audience with Miko&#8217;s mother. We might never see each other again. Considering this situation, a police official allowed me to meet with her mother in a special room for only 10 minutes. How did Miko feel about the mistake she had made when she left her mother sobbing at that time?
 Seven years have passed since the verdict, but Miko&#8217;s death sentence has not been carried out. She is on death row and is allowed to contact her mother by phone on rare occasions, but the money is money that she had smuggled. It is said that you can never have too much of a bad thing, but for now, that is the only way she has left to spend her money.
 What will happen to her in the future? It&#8217;s hard to say for sure, since the domestic situation in Malaysia and the international situation are involved.
 However, there is no guarantee that others will not fall into the trap that she has fallen into. Even if you think it has nothing to do with you, you can be sucked into the depths of darkness by the slightest temptation, just like the nurse who fell into this trap.
 We must not forget that there are countless pitfalls in our society.

 Born in Tokyo in 1977. Nonfiction writer. Graduated from Nihon University College of Art. He is active in reporting and writing about culture, history, and medicine in Japan and abroad. His books include "The House of 'Demons': Parents Who Kill Their Own Children," "Forty-three Killing Intentions: The Depths of the Kawasaki Jr. 1 Boys' Murder Case," "Rental Child," "Kinship Murder," and "Social Map of Disparity and Division.

 Kota Ishii

 An ordinary nurse from Aomori Prefecture has been arrested in Malaysia. She was arrested in Malaysia on suspicion of drug smuggling. The verdict: death penalty. Why was this woman, who was far from a criminal, put on death row? Nonfiction writer Kota Ishii takes a closer look.

The Only Japanese Executed for Drug Smuggling– Story of Female Death Row Inmate Revealed!

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