Pashuteh Yid — I have not seen the video and have no opinion of it. I agree that it is not right when people make it sound like the Japanese government has done something terribly wrong here — after all, drugs were being smuggled in, and they have strict drug laws. It seems clear that whatever mistakes the Japanese did seem to make (i.e. not allowing them to contact the person they were supposed to deliver to, which would have possibly led to the arrest of the real criminals) were only mistakes by the individual agents involved. Overall everything I’ve read from askanim involved seem to say that the Japanese government was behaving in an unusually flexible way according to their usual standards.
HOWEVER, I’d like to address your accusation which I keep seeing and I believe are not accurate. The boys’ defense is not that they were “smuggling” antiques. They were told they were importing delicate religious antiques, which were LEGAL and not subject to tax. They were told that the hidden bottoms, not shipping it, etc. was due to concern over theft and damage to the items. The basis of their defense pretty much is that these boys were sheltered and naive enough to believe this. The current appeal is focusing on the question of the lie detector test that the boys passed which is supposed to show that they did not have even a vague knowledge of their crime. (BTW Japan uses the most sophisticated of the 3 methods of questioning for polygraphs, and their style is considered extremely accurate.)