Maki Kimura, center, the widow of former defendant Toru Kimura, and the defense team enter the Tokyo High Court on Thursday.

A judge says journalists' confessions during World War II were made under torture.

The Tokyo High Court on Thursday ruled in favor of a retrial that could finally clear the names of journalists tortured and convicted in what is considered one of the worst cases of free-speech suppression in wartime Japan.

The high court agreed with a lower court ruling that said the journalists convicted in the ``Yokohama Incident'' were tortured into confessing to violations of a wartime law to maintain public order about 60 years ago.

The court thus rejected an appeal by prosecutors who had argued the case does not warrant a retrial.

The retrial is being sought by bereaved family members of five people convicted in the cases. Two previous retrial petitions had been rejected because of a formality-the records of the cases had been burned.

``I feel we have climbed steps of a great historical staircase in this year marking the 60th anniversary of Japan's defeat,'' Maki Kimura, the widow of former defendant Toru Kimura, told a news conference.

But she said earlier she felt the path so far was ``too long.''

In the Yokohama Incident, the ``thought police'' in Kanagawa Prefecture arrested more than 60 people, most of them journalists, between 1942 and 1945.

They were accused of trying to promote communism or violating the Peace Preservation Law of 1925. Half of them were found guilty. Four died in prison.

Toru Kimura, then a member of the editorial staff at Chuokoron-sha, was arrested in 1943 on suspicion of plotting a revival of the communist party during an overnight stay at an inn in Toyama Prefecture with other journalists the previous year.

Before his death in 1998 at age 82, Kimura wrote: ``For about two years, I kept being forced to confess by such torture as beatings with bamboo or wooden poles.''

Indeed, three police officers were convicted in 1949 of torturing those detained in the series of cases.

In light of the 1949 convictions, Presiding Judge Taketaka Nakagawa of the Tokyo High Court supported a retrial.

``The former defendants were tortured during interrogations into making confessions, which are suspected to have been false, against their will,'' he said.

The high court regarded the police officers' convictions as ``new, clear evidence'' required for a retrial, along with testimony by 31 former defendants submitted with a criminal complaint filed against those officers. By contrast, the Yokohama District Court focused simply on legal grounds when it gave the green light for a new trial in April 2003. The district court said the Peace Preservation Law effectively lost its validity after Japan accepted the Potsdam Declaration on Aug. 14, 1945.

The five former defendants, who have all since died, were convicted between the end of the war and Oct. 15, 1945, when the Peace Preservation Law was abolished.

The high court's decision actually questioned the district court's legal ground, but still favored the retrial.

Toshiki Odanaka, a professor of criminal procedure at Senshu University, said the high court's finding-that the credibility of defendants' confessions under torture was questionable-is ``reasonable.''

``It was a frame-up by way of horrible torture by the special police that was at the heart of the matter, rather than when the law lost its effect,'' Odanaka said. ``It was a courageous decision that squarely faced that point.''

Shotaro Tochigi, deputy chief of the Tokyo High Public Prosecutors Office, said in a statement that the decision was regrettable.

Prosecutors have until Tuesday to appeal. If the high court judgment is finalized, a retrial will start in the Yokohama District Court.

``It was a long way. But we are going to start from now,'' said a family member of one of the former defendants.

Maki Kimura said of Toru: ``The efforts of the man, who repeatedly talked about `human rights' until the end, are finally to be rewarded.''(IHT/Asahi: March 11,2005)