ASAHIKAWA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th April, 2023) A district court in the Japanese city of Asahikawa has sentenced Russian national Pavel Dobryansky, the third mate of Russian freighter Amur, to three years in prison with a five-year suspended sentence, a Sputnik correspondent reported on Thursday from the courtroom.
The Russian ship collided with Japanese crab fishing vessel Daihachi Hokko Maru in the Sea of Okhotsk, north of Japan's Hokkaido island, in May 2021, resulting in the death of three out of five crew members of the Japanese ship.
Dobryansky was detained in Japan and charged with negligence and improper management of the ship. The captain of the Japanese vessel faced the same charges and was sentenced to three years in probation. Japan's prosecutor's office was asking for a penalty of three and a half years in prison for Dobryansky.
Dobryansky's attorney Noriaki Nakamura told Sputnik that the Russian national was found guilty but will not serve his sentence in prison. However, in the event of repeating the offense, the prison time under Dobryansky's sentence will be added to a new sentence.
The Russian national will be handed over to Japan's immigration authorities for subsequent deportation to Russia as he does not have a valid Japanese visa and has only a seaman's passport.
The defense of the Russian insisted on his innocence and also questioned the arguments of the prosecutor's office. In March, Nakamura told Sputnik that the investigative experiment carried out by Japan's maritime security service was extremely careless, adding that in conditions of heavy fog (visibility was 10-15 meters at the time of the accident) and given that the Japanese boat was made of plastic, the radar of the Russian vessel could not detect it.
Moreover, Nakamura said that the Russian vessel passes some 400 meters (1,312 feet) in two minutes when the engine stops, so the Japanese boat had to give way and maneuver when it saw the bigger vessel as it was smaller and faster. The defense also insisted that the crew of Japan's vessel did not look at the radar and did not respond to radio signals.
