<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">Malaysian Court Sentences Miko to Death</figcaption></figure>
 In recent years, a number of Japanese nationals have been sentenced to death for their involvement in illegal drug smuggling overseas. Here In the past 15 In the past 15 years, seven Japanese nationals have been executed in China for using poisonous drugs.
 They are all men, but there are Japanese women who have also been sentenced to death. She is Miko, a former nurse who was arrested at the airport in Malaysia for smuggling methamphetamine.
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 It has been seven years this year since the Malaysian federal court confirmed the death sentence against Miko for smuggling methamphetamine after the first and second trials. The execution has yet to be carried out and she remains imprisoned in Malaysia.
 Miko is from Aomori Prefecture and was arrested at 37 years old. She was 37 years old at the time of her arrest. She was single and worked at a hospital. She was unmarried and working at a hospital. If you ask her this much, she could be any ordinary woman. But why was she involved in the smuggling of methamphetamine at the airport in Malaysia and sentenced to death?
 There was an unfathomable world of darkness.
 Miko was arrested in 2009 In 2009 October 2009. It was in October 2009 that Miko was arrested.
 Malaysia, located in Southeast Asia, is a cosmopolitan city with a large population of Muslim Malays, Chinese, Indians, and Arabs.
 That day, Miko showed up at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia. It is a large airport that can be called the hub of Southeast Asia. After arriving on an Emirates flight from Dubai in the Middle East, she collected her multiple suitcases that she had checked in the plane.
 Most Japanese people can pass through the customs at this airport without much checking. However, this day happened to be the middle of a period of heightened customs checks. Because of this, the customs officer stopped Miko, who was coming from the Middle East with several suitcases in her hands, as he thought she was suspicious, and decided to check the contents of her luggage. Then, about 3.5 kilograms of methamphetamine was discovered at the bottom of the processed suitcases.
<h2>More than 200 million yen worth of methamphetamine</h2>
 According to Malaysian law. 50 Under Malaysian law, possession of more than 50 grams of methamphetamine can result in a death sentence. In fact, many people from Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa have been detained and sentenced to death.
 Miko was in possession of3.5 kilos of methamphetamine. Miko was in possession of five kilograms of methamphetamine, a huge amount, worth more than 200 million yen at the Japanese retail price. Everyone in the room thought that it was a large-scale smuggling operation involving an organization, not for personal use.
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 Immediately after her arrest, Miko said, &#8220;This package is mine.
 This luggage doesn&#8217;t belong to me. I got it from a foreigner at the Dubai airport.
 The customs official asked her who gave her the luggage. But Miko could not answer.
 I don&#8217;t know. I don&#8217;t know the name.
 Since there was no one to whom she had checked the luggage and the methamphetamine was found in Miko&#8217;s possession, the customs officer had to arrest her. She was taken into custody and subjected to interrogation.
 During the interrogation after her arrest, Miko consistently insisted on the same thing. She said that the suitcase had been entrusted to her in Dubai and that she had no knowledge of the person&#8217;s name or contact information. In other words, she insisted that the methamphetamine did not belong to her.
 11. At the first trial held in Malaysia in 2006, Miko&#8217;s claim remained unchanged. However, the judge&#8217;s decision was as follows.
 &#8211;Death penalty Death penalty.
 In addition to the fact that the judge could not identify the person who allegedly handed over the package, he also found that she was3.five The judge took the fact that she had brought in five kilograms of methamphetamine, in addition to the fact that she could not identify the person she claimed had given the package to her, very seriously, and ruled that the death penalty was appropriate in light of the country&#8217;s laws.
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead="The raw and earnest voice of Miko"></div>
 As a journalist covering this case, I had several meetings with Miko in prison. The first visit was shortly after the verdict of the first trial. She appeared in the visiting room of the prison, dressed in the red and white prison uniform worn only by those who had been sentenced to death. Through the acrylic panel, she repeated the same arguments as before.
 I don&#8217;t know anything. I don&#8217;t know anything, I was just asked by a foreign stranger to carry my luggage at the Dubai airport. So I picked up my suitcase and went through customs at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, and suddenly I was arrested. I had no idea that there were methamphetamines in my luggage.
<figure id="attachment_229698" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 3648px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-229698"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="f6d6179b"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2022/02/RIMG0264.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-229698" class="wp-caption-text">Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia, where Miko was arrested.</figcaption></figure>
 During the interview, she kept repeating that she had not lied, that she had been deceived, and that no one would help her.
 As I looked at her earnestly through the acrylic panel, I wondered if the death penalty was too serious a crime if it were true.
 In fact, I was once approached by a suspicious foreigner at an airport overseas and asked if I would be willing to carry my luggage as your luggage. Not just once or twice, but more than five times in total in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
 Why would someone ask me to do that? The weight of checked luggage is limited to a certain number of kilograms per person, and if you exceed the limit, you will be charged an excess fee. That&#8217;s why they ask for the excess weight of their luggage to be checked in under the name of another passenger on the same flight.
<h2>I want to clear my name.</h2>
<figure id="attachment_229699" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 3648px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-229699"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="af81d142"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2022/02/RIMG0269.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-229699" class="wp-caption-text">At the airport, there were signs showing what to declare and how much to pay in each country&#8217;s language.</figcaption></figure>
 But most of these stories are about crime. It is a common practice for smugglers to sneak in illegal drugs in the name of luggage, without telling you. If they succeed, they pick it up when they leave the airport, and if they fail, they run away like a lizard.
 I knew this, so whenever I was offered such a deal overseas, I refused, suspecting a crime. No matter if the person is with children or an elderly person, you have to protect yourself.
 However, if Miko didn&#8217;t know about this, she would have left her luggage in Dubai in good faith without suspecting the other party. If that is the reason why she was sentenced to death, it must be a pity story, even if it is her own fault.
 During our meeting at the prison, she also told us, &#8220;Actually, I am going to fight the second trial.
 In fact, I have to fight the second trial now. But I don&#8217;t have enough money to hire a lawyer and fight the trial. I want to clear my name. So, can you please contact my parents and friends at home and tell them to help me?
 I wasn&#8217;t sure if I should believe Miko&#8217;s claim or not. However, there was a Japanese man in front of me who had been sentenced to death and was trying to fight the second trial, claiming his innocence. He asked me to help him, and I couldn&#8217;t just turn him down.
 I promised to do what I could and left the prison.
 After the meeting at the prison, I decided to conduct interviews in Malaysia and Japan to verify the facts. Based on the information she gave me, I interviewed her friends one by one.
 However, the more I interviewed, the less I knew what the truth was.
 In Malaysia, I followed the whereabouts of a foreign man from the Middle East who was said to be a local acquaintance of Miko. I thought that if I could ask this man about Miko&#8217;s behavior in Malaysia, I could learn something.
<figure id="attachment_229700" class="wp-caption alignnone" style="width: 3648px;" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-229700"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="9df0269f"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2022/02/RIMG0268.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-229700" class="wp-caption-text">It is dangerous to trust a strange foreigner who talks to you at the airport, even if he is a child or an elderly person.</figcaption></figure>
 I went to a district in Malaysia where many people from the Middle East lived and searched for the man, who had apparently tried his best to get her released right after Miko&#8217;s arrest, but had somehow disappeared soon after he found out that it was impossible.
 I had no choice but to investigate the man&#8217;s surroundings. I had no choice but to investigate his surroundings, and it began to become clear that he was involved with a drug smuggling syndicate. Moreover, the organization was such that even the local police could not get involved. At that point, I had no choice but to give up my reporting in Malaysia.
 After returning to Japan, I decided to cover the area around Miko. As in Malaysia, suspicious friendships began to emerge.
 According to the story, Miko spent her teenage years in Aomori Prefecture. According to the story, Miko spent her teenage years in Aomori Prefecture, and then came to the Kanto area after obtaining her nursing license. After that A little over 15 years later Over the next 15 years, she worked as a nurse in a hospital as a single woman, enjoyed traveling abroad on occasional vacations, and worked as a nurse in a hospital. 37 years old. She was 37 years old when she was supposed to be involved in this case.
 However, when she went through each person she had been involved with in Japan, she came across some not-so-nice people. Some were brothel owners, others had been arrested for methamphetamine. One of them had been arrested at Narita International Airport for smuggling methamphetamine and was in custody.
 Working as a nurse in a hospital, she would not have had the opportunity to meet these people. Why are there so many of these people around her?
 I found out the reason when I met Miko&#8217;s mother who was living in Aomori.
 For more details, please read the <a href="https://friday.kodansha.co.jp/article/229705">second part</a> of this story.

 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.

Shocking Story Behind Japanese Nurse Sentence to Death on Foreign Land

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