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2 Men Face New Accusations After Arrest for Posting Shonen Jump Images Early
posted on by Joanna Cayanan
The two foreign nationals who were arrested earlier this month for allegedly posting images of manga from Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine faced new accusations on Sunday by the Kumamoto and Niigata prefectural police's joint investigation unit. This time, the suspects are also accused of posting images of manga from Kodansha's Weekly Shōnen Magazine online before their scheduled publication.
One of the suspects, 36-year-old Samir Musa, reportedly runs the limited liability company Japan Deal World, which sells manga-related goods in Tokyo's Kita Ward. Musa reportedly purchased the magazines from a distributor.
According to the police investigation, the two suspects posted image data of popular manga serialized in Weekly Shōnen Magazine online, without permission and before the issues' official release, on September 3 and again on January 13. The suspects are also suspected of violating copyright law by reproducing the image data five days before their formal release date in January.
According to NHK's report, Musa has admitted to the new accusations.
The two suspects were arrested earlier on February 4 for allegedly posting images of manga from Weekly Shonen Jump. According to NHK, the suspects were detained until this past Sunday, before police made new accusations against them over Weekly Shōnen Magazine. (In Japan, police can only detain a suspect for up to 23 days without a formal indictment, although the police can then make new accusations to detain the suspect for another 23 days.)
The police suspect others are involved and are investigating further.
Japanese police arrested three people for allegedly uploading Eiichiro Oda's One Piece manga from Weekly Shonen Jump in 2017.
