A Singaporean diplomat is under police investigation on suspicion of secretly photographing a naked schoolboy at a public bath in Tokyo while he was serving as a counsellor at the embassy, an investigative source said Thursday.
The 55-year-old diplomat, who already exited Japan in mid-April, allegedly took pictures of the junior high school student using a smartphone in the bathhouse's dressing room in Tokyo's Minato Ward in February, the source said. The bathhouse reported the incident to the police.
The diplomat has been dismissed as a counsellor but was immune to arrest in accordance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which states that diplomats cannot be arrested or detained in a country they have been dispatched to.
Although the diplomat admitted to police that he photograhed the student and has deleted some 700 images in total he said he had taken with the smartphone, he refused to voluntarily go to a police station or hand over his smartphone, the source said.
Police are investigating whether the diplomat violated any laws such as one relating to child pornography.
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