http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cg.....0718pb.htm

Last week at the Pyongyang airport, he was walking around without any problem, under his own power, up and down stairs.

In Indonesia, he started to use a cane.

On arrival in Japan, he was using a cane, was supported by his wife, and then taken directly to a hospital, which he entered by wheelchair. (BTW, he was met at the hospital–with flowers–by a family member of an abductee, who said he didn’t look or act as bad as he had expected.)

Airlines also have facilities and ways to help people in poor health, and it is of course not necessary at all for him to have to walk down a flight of steps from the airplane at Haneda. Odd that they would have an ill man do that just for the TV cameras.

Japanese politicians, incidentally, have a long history of suddenly falling ill and checking into hospitals just when the proscectors start calling to ask how they got that money and where it all went to.

Added to which a high Japanese government official dropped a big hint that the problem was cancer.

I’m not saying he’s faking it and the Japanese government is going along with it, but this is an odd sequence of events.

There is a fourth, more likely option (the correspondent cites 3 options possible).

Here are the three options cited:

1. “The US allows Jenkins to be hospitalized in Tokyo for quite a while, possibly until the US presidential election in November, without bringing any indictments against him and just waiting for a presidential pardon, post-election.”

Comment: the issue has been brought to a head, now that Jenkins is in Japan. The US military would protest strenously against the situation being allowed to linger like this due to “politics”. Action on the case could only be postponed if Jenkins remains genuinely, seriously ill (i.e. bedridden) until after the election. And he’s not going to get a “pardon” at any time — I think that’s laughable, at least with this President.

(I suppose I can see how Asians might think that after Clinton, anything is possible with pardons. But if Jenkins were pardoned it would initiate a firestorm of protest in the US military. Remember the outpouring of protest at Clinton’s pardons)?

2. “The US allows Jenkins to be hospitalized only for a short time, then brings indictments against him. But Jenkins then plea-bargains, confessing everything he saw and experienced in North Korea. Then charges are dropped and Jenkins remains in Japan with his family.”

Comment: the charges will not be formally “dropped”, no matter what he “confesses” to. See my fourth option scenario, below.

3. “The US allows Jenkins to be hospitalized only for a short time, then indicts him in accordance with military law. In this scenario, he would be tried in the US, just as an ordinary war deserter.”

Comment: as the correspondent says, humanitarian concerns and the US government’s concerns for good relations with Koizumi and Japan are a real enough factor. But no US President can afford to simply
“not press charges” (or give a “pre-emptive pardon”) to so blatant a deserter (one who also aided the enemy, which is another possible UCMJ charge against him).

However — the US govt might be willing to allow Jenkins to remain in Japan, IF he formally surrenders (with Japanese consent) to US military jurisdiction over his person, under a fourth scenario …

4. My prediction: the US government will allow Jenkins to stay in Japan with his family, but only after formal surrender of his person to control of US military authorities in Japan (at least symbolically — he might be allowed to stay in the Japanese hospital where he is now, under personal guard of US military police).

The charges won’t be dropped, but the US government can offer him (IF it chooses to, and IF Jenkins accepts) a dishonorable discharge in lieu of court-martial.

Jenkins is formally disgraced, and loses all rank, pay and allowances (40 years worth, a considerable sum! — remember, a real prisoner of war gets his pay continued during his period of imprisonment).

Jenkins becomes a convicted felon in the eyes of US law. If he agrees to this, I predict the government will agree to not sentence him to any imprisonment in the US, and then allow him to remain in Japan as a humanitarian gesture, given his medical condition and advanced age.

(He should also be stripped of his US citizenship IMO, but that is not a punishment that the US military is authorized to inflict).

I predict this fourth option will prove acceptable to both the US and Japanese governments. The question is, will Jenkins accept it?

If he was really “kidnapped” (as his relatives in the US maintain), he should of course refuse this offer, surrender to the US authorities for court-martial, and then try to prove his case in court. Somehow I doubt this is going to happen, though.