Andrew Rule: Why Chika Honda’s ordeal should still conjure shame

Wrongly accused of heroin trafficking, Japanese tourist Chika Honda — and five others — paid an appalling price for the presumed guilt of one. Thirty years on, the police case still reeks.

Chika Honda spent 10 years in prison wrongly accused of heroin trafficking.

The frightened woman was locked in a prison cell between court appearances in a trial that baffled and terrified her.

She didn’t understand English, the Australian legal system or the charges.

She didn’t have the language or the money to get her own lawyer and couldn’t understand those provided by the court.

Her name was Chika Honda. Some people might still feel shame when they hear it.

Such as the federal police who arrested her with six others, prosecutors who played along, and tame lawyers who muddled through a defence.

The fact is, Honda and five other Japanese tourists paid an appalling price for the presumed guilt of one.

Some people may still feel shame when they hear Chika Honda’s name. Picture: AAP

Maybe they were the wrong nationality to get a fair shake. People in Japan certainly thought so. So did real criminals and prison officers inside, who saw them as fall guys.

Chika Honda’s story starts in Japan in 1992 when a man named Yoshio Katsuno told friends and relatives he’d been offered a cheap group holiday to Australia.

Katsuno said the discount tickets were a gesture from a Malaysian businessman known as “Charlie” who was embarrassed that Yoshio had been hurt in a car accident while visiting him.

Why Charlie subsidised an entire group is clearly questionable – but in Asia it’s common for business associates to give and receive substantial gifts.

Yoshio invited, among others, his older brothers Mitsuo and Masaharu Katsuno. Masaharu, then 42, was a retired policeman previously estranged from Yoshio because of Yoshio’s minor convictions.

Mitsuo invited his girlfriend but when her job prevented her from going, she suggested taking their mutual friend, Chika Honda.

Japanese tourist Yoshio Katsuno was caught smuggling heroin into Australia.

Yoshio sold two tickets to a firm that wanted to reward a loyal employee, Megumi Ishikubo, who in turn invited her female friend, Hiromi Kato. The seventh group member was former stuntman Kiichoro Asami, 59.

None of them knew everyone else in the group, not unusual for Japanese holidaymakers. Their five-day tour itinerary was not unusual: Phillip Island penguins, Sovereign Hill, Captain Cook’s cottage then Sydney Harbour Bridge and Opera House.

A prosecutor later called it a sham but it’s what Japanese tourists routinely did.

The group members met each other just before flying to Kuala Lumpur to meet Yoshio’s contact, Charlie, who was supposedly going to Australia with them.

Charlie met them with two sedans and a van. Chika Honda and three others put their luggage in the van.

Over dinner, Charlie said he’d been delayed and would join them in Australia a day later. Outside the restaurant, they found that the van had gone, apparently stolen.

Chika Honda is interviewed by police. Picture: YouTube

The four with bags in the van were upset. Charlie assured them he’d put the word out and would get the luggage back. He did, sending it to their hotel. But instead of their own bags there were four new suitcases. They were told their bags had been slashed by the thief and were ruined but their clothes were unharmed and had been repacked in the new cases.

Chika Honda was angry. The new suitcase looked big and heavy – not that she handled it herself until they got to Melbourne at 6.35am on June 17.

If the six sleepy Japanese led by Yoshio Katsuno knew what was hidden in the cases, they showed no sign. They looked perplexed and annoyed but not nervous.

Even after X-rays revealed false panels and white powder, the six seemed more confused than scared.

Chika Honda’s prison diaries. Picture: Mayu Kanamori

What Chika Honda and the other women didn’t know was that Yoshio had been a minor Yakuza associate and that their supposed benefactor, Charlie, was a Triad man.

Later on, they realised why so many police had been waiting for them at Melbourne Airport. It was a set-up — if not a Triad eliminating a rival then maybe a callous double-cross to divert attention from a bigger drug shipment the same day.

Either way, it relied on sacrificing the “patsies”. Yoshio was obviously complicit in some way, but he’d most likely been misled about the contraband. He was a petty crook, more likely to act calmly if he believed it was jewellery in the cases rather than enough heroin to get him a huge jail sentence in Australia – or a mandatory death sentence in Malaysia.

As for the Federal Police, was it true their Asian posts were threatened by budget cuts, so they needed a dramatic “result”?

Would Australian cops stoop to backhanded deals with Malaysian “informers” in order to stage a strategic “pinch”? Is that why they leaked (days later) a dramatic story about arresting “Japanese Mafia”, prejudicing chances of a fair trial?

The heroin in the suitcase was damning – but, strictly speaking, it was only circumstantial evidence.

Chika Honda served 10 years in an Australian prison for her part in a 1992 heroin smuggling operation.

Articulate, well-connected passengers with strong English would have been outraged enough to be properly represented. But the Japanese hit the language barrier, unable to explain they weren’t part of a conspiracy but a victim of one.

The police, meanwhile, had their own problems – which would doubly damn the tourists.

The police thought a heavy trafficker would come to the tourists’ hotel to get the heroin. They set up surveillance to trap whoever came – but no one did.

The caper had tanked but the Keystone cops still craved kudos. That meant portraying innocent patsies as big traffickers. But, oddly, not all of them.

Eight people had been detained (seven Japanese plus a Malaysian suspected of riding shotgun on the group) but only six were charged.

Two of the women, Kato and Ishikubo, were sent home uncharged. Funny that obliging cops took them to the zoo and the beach before taking them to the airport.

That pair never wavered about the innocence of Honda and the others – but they were warned not to return to Australia to give evidence.

If two innocents could be arbitrarily exonerated, then the same could be argued for Honda and, by extension, most of the Japanese.

The police case reeked but the ‘feds’ needed scalps.

If any two of them did not know about the heroin then six of them could be similarly ignorant.

The police case reeked. But the “feds” needed scalps. So did prosecutors, unimpeded by Legal Aid lawyers who could not understand their clients well enough.

From Japan, it looked like a kangaroo court. An independent study in 2008 concluded that Chika Honda had been wronged and deserved a pardon. Too true – but too late.

In 2002, she finished her 10 years’ jail and was deported.

In Japan, it was notorious as “the Melbourne Case”, an example of a crushing injustice.

Compare it with the three-year ordeals of Australian academic Kylie Moore-Gilbert in Iran and of Chinese-Australian journalist Cheng Lei in China, who both returned to a blaze of publicity underlining the unfairness of it all.

Chika Honda’s ordeal lasted three times that long.

This reporter visited her in prison in 2002 just before her release.

The beautiful young woman arrested 10 years earlier had gone grey and aged visibly. She had lost her chance of child bearing while locked away by a miscarriage of natural justice.

It was a shameful thing and still is.

Thirty years on, there are retired or senior lawyers and police who took part in that heartless process. Maybe their families and friends will read this and ask them about it.