Ghosn’s Life Back in Jail: Half-Hour of Fresh Air, No Family Visits
Photo:
issei kato/Reuters
Weekends are the worst for Carlos Ghosn. Alone in his cell, he isn’t permitted to leave for the 30 minutes of fresh air he gets on weekdays. The lights burn 24 hours a day. He can’t wear a watch and sometimes he finds himself disoriented.
“Weekends he’s cut off from the world, there’s nothing,” his wife, Carole Ghosn, said in an interview describing her husband’s life behind bars.
For a month, the couple lived together in a Tokyo apartment after Mr. Ghosn was freed on bail. Now, after his rearrest on April 4 on new suspicions of financial misconduct, the former globe-spanning auto executive who lived in houses on three continents is back in the same cell.
The former Nissan Motor Co. chairman is likely to find out this week whether he will face additional months behind bars. Prosecutors must either indict Mr. Ghosn by Monday on new charges or release him, and a new indictment is widely expected. That will enable Mr. Ghosn to seek release on bail.
“The whole system is there to make you break,” Ms. Ghosn said. “They’re not violent, but they make everything so hard. It’s a torture.”
Japanese authorities say Mr. Ghosn is receiving normal treatment. Earlier this month, the Tokyo District Court approved Mr. Ghosn’s continued detention.
“There is substantial reason to be wary of the suspect destroying evidence in the case through measures such as pressuring people involved,” the ruling said, according to an excerpt released by a Ghosn lawyer who argued the justification was too vague.
Prosecutors say the seriousness of the latest matter, in which the 65-year-old is suspected of taking at least $5 million for personal gain out of payments made by Nissan to a distributor in Oman, justified arresting him again. Mr. Ghosn says he is innocent. His representatives have said neither he nor his family benefited from Nissan payments.
Since his latest arrest, prosecutors have been interrogating Mr. Ghosn for up to five hours a day, according to his lawyers—to no avail, they say, because Mr. Ghosn is responding merely, “I have nothing to say” or “Isn’t this a waste of time?”
Yuichi Kaido, a lawyer and the president of the Center for Prisoners’ Rights, said prosecutors can sometimes harangue suspects who stay silent for 10 hours a day. The treatment and strict rules are designed “to make suspects feel that they want to give up fighting,” he said.
Japanese authorities deny that the judicial system is set up to torture suspects into confessing.
After his first arrest on Nov. 19, Mr. Ghosn answered questions to defend himself and signed statements that were written in Japanese, a language he can’t read, his then-lawyer said. In February, he dismissed that lawyer, a former prosecutor, and appointed new lawyers who advised staying silent. He was freed in early March after spending 108 days behind bars.
Lawyers and interrogators now represent the main human contact at the Tokyo Detention Center for the former auto boss.
When first arrested, Mr. Ghosn was put in a room with Japanese-style tatami mats and a futon. After his first several weeks in detention, he was switched to a cell with a bed and is in that same cell now, said Ms. Ghosn, who has been told that by her husband’s lawyers. Although there is a window, “he can’t look outside. It’s too deep, and it’s not transparent,” she said.
Mr. Ghosn is allowed a shower twice a week, which would rise to three times a week if his detention extends into summer, and otherwise is stuck with cold water from the tap in his room, his wife said.
Without a watch, “it’s so disorienting to him because he doesn’t know what time of day it is,” she said. Especially in winter when the nights were long, “he couldn’t tell and it was bothering him. It was mental torture,” Ms. Ghosn said.
Detainees get 30 minutes outside on weekdays but not when the jail is on weekend or holiday staffing. Ms. Ghosn said her husband would go outside at 8 a.m. and walk on the roof to get fresh air. But during the year-end and New Year holidays “when they closed down for six days, he was locked in his room,” she said. Ms. Ghosn said she was concerned that something similar could happen when Japan has 10 straight days off surrounding the May 1 enthronement of a new emperor.
Although Mr. Ghosn looked fit and healthy in a video taken just before his latest arrest, if his confinement is extended, it could worsen a kidney condition with which he has been diagnosed, Ms. Ghosn said.
When locked in his cell for an extended time, Mr. Ghosn’s treatment resembles the definition of solitary confinement by Stuart Grassian, a U.S. expert in the subject: “the confinement of a prisoner alone in a cell for all, or nearly all, of the day with minimal environmental stimulation and minimal opportunity for social interaction.”
Japan has 10 consecutive days off from April 27 to May 6, including the regular Golden Week holidays and extra days to mark the May 1 enthronement of a new emperor. Mr. Kaido of the prisoner-rights center said he was calling on authorities not to shut in detainees for all 10 days.
At other periods, Mr. Ghosn has had more social interaction. After the initial round of indictments ended in January, family members could visit, but not now. On regular business days, he is entitled to meet lawyers and consular officials.
In his free time, Mr. Ghosn has been reading thrillers by Dan Brown and Harlan Coben and doing Sudoku number puzzles, Ms. Ghosn said.
“He’s learned to appreciate just the smallest things make him so happy,” she said. “He’s saying he’s lucky. He could have died on Nov. 19, but he’s survived to live this, and to learn to appreciate life even more.”
—Megumi Fujikawa contributed to this article.
Write to Nick Kostov at Nick.Kostov@wsj.com and Peter Landers at peter.landers@wsj.com
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