Tokyo, Japan – Yossi’s Brother Speaks Up About Sentencing and What the Family Went Through

Tokyo, Japan – Israeli Charedi Hebrew newspaper Sha’ah Tova printed an interview with Yosef ben Itta Rivka’s older brother Yona, who returned to Israel a short while after Yossi was sentenced in Japan last Friday for smuggling drugs to Japan. He had been conned into this deed unwittingly by a respected member of his chassidus 15 years his elder.

For the past year, the families of the three bochurim incarcerated in Japan have refrained from giving interviews. This is the first interview with a family member which intimately touches on what this brother has been going through, the suffering of his family, their feelings after the sentencing and their hopes for a miracle.

“The sentence,” says Yona, “was the lesser of two evils. It involves a lengthy prison sentence, but everyone involved are happy to be over this point. Now we can start doing things to relieve Yossi’s prison conditions by applying for his transfer to Israel.

The family believes that the boys had been set up already in Holland. Yona says, “Something didn’t smell right. The boys were given electronic tickets with a reservation for the Hilton hotel in Tokyo — which was cancelled even before they reached Japan. Apparently, their senders realized they were going to get caught. We’re aware of a few other signs which show that it was doctored. The travel agency through which the reservation was made provided the details after the judge forced them.

“Yossi was placed in the Chiba prison. Over the past year my parents visited him a few times, and I did too. We rented a one-room apartment in Chiba for the ‘low’ price of $1,700 a month. For Shabbosim, we travel to Tokyo so we can daven with a minyan at the local Chabad House.

“The first time I saw him, several days after he was imprisoned, he looked terrible. He was still being interrogated daily, with some of the sessions lasting 12 hours. When they brought him to the room to meet me, he was sure he was being taken for another interrogation. He almost hadn’t slept 15 days. When he saw me, he was sure he was seeing a heavenly apparition. Until today he doesn’t stop saying how important that moment was for him. He didn’t even know if his family in Israel knew what condition he was in. When he heard from me that thousands are praying for him every day, it greatly encouraged him. Before then, I had never heard of Japan and had no idea how serious the affair was. It was nightmarish. Yossi, who was then 17 years old, looked like a sack of bones.

“All we could give him was 5 pieces of white bread. That’s all he has been eating since he was incarcerated last year. Avraham Schwartz (a Jew who lives in the area) has been visiting him every day and buying these pieces of bread from the prison to give him. Everything else was treif. Besides being treif, he’s not used to Japanese food. Once they brought him fish and he couldn’t even approach it because of the smell. Besides the bread, he is allotted a fruit once every two weeks. For Pesach, he was given a large amount of matzos, but whatever was left over was taken from him right after the holiday.”

“He is in a small cell, most of which is taken up by a futon placed on the floor. He is woken every morning at 7. He has to fold the futon and can’t sit on it during the day. He can either sit on the floor or stand. If he was sitting and just placed his hand to lean on something, the guard were already shouting at him to sit straight. They have tough discipline there. Only at noontime is he permitted to rest on the futon for an hour.

“Twice a week they take prisoners out to the yard for 10 minutes. If it’s cloudy, they don’t let them out. Sometimes it was several weeks until Yossi could move his limbs.

“When I came to visit him, I could only speak with him through a glass,” Yona recalled. “Yossi was put in the worst building of the prison, without heating in the winter or cooling in the summer. When I saw him last, he told me, ‘Summer is again approaching. The heat was scorching. Do what you can to get me out of here because I can’t bear another summer here.’ They only allow taking showers twice a week, and the prison cell is crawling with bugs and other animals.”

Winter was no picnic either. Yossi had ice on the walls of his cell. His hands were blue from the cold. Because they didn’t give enough blankets, his family provided him with 5 coats which he used to sleep in.

“We managed to bring him many seforim as well as chareidi newspapers from Israel. Yossi is angry at the papers who mentioned his name; after all, he was a minor. I buy him all the chareidi papers in Israel and send them to Japan. Avraham Schwartz brings them to the prison. Most of the time he learns Torah, davens, and studies sifrei chassidus. He’s gotten much stronger in his Yiddishkeit.”

Yona has only good words for the Israeli ambassador to Japan, Nissim ben Shitreet and consuls Ms. Shavit and Ms. Friedman, who have helped them through the crisis in every way. On the last day Yona was in Japan, the Israeli embassy had a party (Yom Ha’Atzma’ut?) and invited the Satmar family to join them. The Israeli officials told Yona and his family that they would do the best to help them, 24 hours a day. “They helped us whenever we asked,” Yona says in sincere appreciation.

Other people who greatly helped the family and Yossi through the crisis was Rav Menachem Mendel Shafran, a dayan from Ashdod strongly involved in askonus, and Rabbi Mendi Sudkevitch, the Chabad shliach in Tokyo. “Whenever we called them, even 4 a.m., they would always answer. I never saw such mesirus nefesh, all completely voluntary.”

Yona also lauds Dr. David Buxbaum, who pro bono led the Japanese legal team and the defense strategy. “He’s not a young man; he’s 76. But he is dynamic and fresh like a young man. He is a well known lawyer in China, and has offices all over the world. He came a few times to China to help Yossi. He was available at all times and ready to do anything we requested. I have no words to thank him. May Hashem reward him generously.”

The family was allowed 20-minute sessions to spend with Yossi. “Besides the moral support it gave him, it afford him the chance to sit on a chair. Yossi also took advantage of the privilege to get a “hair-cut” every two weeks, even though he didn’t need it. Anything to just get out of his jail cell for a few minutes.

“We knew that the maximum sentence for a minor was 10 years in prison. We hoped for a miracle. In Japan, it’s impossible to be acquitted. The reality is that 99.3% of the accused are guilty in the end.” Yona has dozens of clippings from Japanese newspapers of sentences given for drug smuggling. All of them ended with stiff prison sentences.

Yossi was acquainted with all the details of his defense. His family and lawyers spent months preparing for it, and Yona believes that the outcome would have been worse without the vast preparation that went into the case. In the days before the final sentencing, Yossi recited the entire Tehilim and thousands prayed for him.

Two days before the sentencing, the prosecutor was changed, and the new prosecutor gave Yossi his passport, identity card and other documents. “We began to hope that a miracle was going to happen,” says Yona. “No one could explain that gesture, not even the Japanese attorneys. When I heard the relatively stiff sentence, it was a sudden, harsh blow.”

Yossi was brought to court for his sentencing, accompanied by two guards, with his hands handcuffed and tied behind his back. When he entered the court, the guards removed the handcuffs and he was told to sit down.

“The final sentence was given in the presence of the family, the askanim who had helped out, many Japanese attorneys who we didn’t know, and the police interrogators. The Japanese were fascinated by this case, which was part of the problem. Because they made such a sensation of it, the judge couldn’t let Yossi get off without a tough sentence.”

“At the sentencing, Yossi broke out in heart-rending sobs. Luckily, that day he was to be taken to shower, and they give showers in a building which is heated. When he came out of his shower, his spirits had lifted and he told me, ‘I’ll deal with this. I have the Ribono Shel Olam with me. But how you will calm Mama?”

The family is hoping Yossi will now be transferred to a prison for westerners or minors, where the conditions are relatively better. “The judge sentenced him to forced labor. I don’t know what kind of work that entails, but I hope it will be for minors, which will be easier. Yossi himself wants to work. He can’t bear being in that room anymore. He told us, ‘I don’t care what I have to do; the main thing is to get out of here.'”

Yona has seen the kind of work that prisoners do — making shoes, tissue boxes from wood, plates, etc. “I hope he’s not sent to the Foji prison, which is the worst one. I don’t know if this depends on the judge. Our lawyer is working on it.”

Yona is also critical about how the press in Israel reported the Japanese treatment of the yeshiva bochurim. “I have to say that the media circus caused damage to the whole process. You have to know that every clipping, every newspaper, everything that was written about the affair in Israel was translated in Japan and is sitting on the prosecutor’s desk. It’s a mazal that Yossi wasn’t able to see the early media reports, which were filled with false stories.”

“After everything he went through, I think Yossi can be a lawyer himself,” Yona says with an ironic smile.

The effect on Yossi’s family has been immense. “All 12 of us brothers and sisters went through a very hard time. Our lives have changed over the past year. But thank G-d, we’ve reached the stage where we’ve finished the trial. “The real work will begin in the coming weeks. If the lawyers decide not to appeal the sentence, and to work on transferring him to Israel, we have lots of bureaucracy to wade through. There was a recent similar story of an Israel who was imprisoned in Japan for 6 years. It took 10 months to transfer him back to Israel.

“Yossi has become stronger. He’s not the same Yossi from a year ago. He has become steeled. At first we were in shock. We didn’t dream that such a thing could happen to Yossi. He entered the prison like a child and today he is an adult who is sensibly thinking everything out. We’re continuing to support him and pray for him, together with the thousands who are davening for his salvation and the salvation of two of his friends.

Dr. David C. Buxbaum, Yossi’s lead defense, is an Orthodox Jew and professor of international criminal law who has lived in China for several decades. He received his legal education in New York University and University of Michigan, and was the first American lawyer to move to China after President Reagan unfroze relations with the Chinese. Many of the top lawyers in Japan, including those working on the case with him, were his students in university. He lives the Asian culture and is able to bridge between it and western culture.

“The chance to transfer the bochur to Israel to carry out his punishment depends on the degree of cooperation provided by Israel,” explains Dr. Buxbaum.

He says that the judges realized that the boy was innocent, but issued a harsh ruling according to the law’s stipulations. “Despite him violating the law, the facts still remain that he did it unknowingly and was completely innocent,” Dr. Buxbaum avers.