Former lawmaker and YouTuber arrested in Japan over celebrity threats

Yoshikazu Higashitani, better known as GaaSyy, returned to Japan months after Tokyo police issued his arrest warrant.

Japanese police have arrested a YouTuber and former lawmaker for making threats to celebrities.

Yoshikazu Higashitani, known on YouTube as GaaSyy, is famous for celebrity gossip videos.

Local media reported that he was in the United Arab Emirates and returned to Japan two months after Tokyo police issued a warrant for his arrest.

Higashitani is accused of threatening to defame an actor, businessman and fashion designer between February and August last year. He is also suspected of hindering the designer’s business activities.

He repeatedly ignored requests to return to Japan and voluntarily submit to police interrogation.

In May, Tokyo police sent investigators to the UAE and appealed to local authorities to extradite him to Japan.

Japan’s foreign minister ordered him to hand over his passport after Tokyo police issued his arrest warrant in March, but Higashitani said he lost it. His passport expired the following month.

Earlier this year, he became the first lawmaker in Japanese history to be expelled from parliament without ever having entered.

Higashitani was one of two elected members of the Seijika-joshi-48 party, a single cause party calling for reforms at Japan’s public broadcaster.

During his seven months in office, he refused to leave his home in Dubai and did not attend a single legislative session.

At the time, Japanese media reported that he had refused to appear in Parliament because he feared arrest on charges of celebrity fraud and defamation.

Lawmakers asked Higashitani to fly to Tokyo to personally apologize for his absence, but he did not attend the plenary session.

Instead, he announced on his YouTube channel that he was going to Turkey and that he planned to donate his salary to help earthquake victims.

His absence angered the Senate, whose members voted unanimously to expel him.

Source: Terra

Rose

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