TOKYO - A Singaporean diplomat is under police investigation on suspicion of secretly photographing a naked schoolboy at a public bath in Tokyo while he was serving as a counsellor at the embassy, an investigative source said Thursday.
The 55-year-old diplomat allegedly took pictures of the junior high school student using a smartphone in the bathhouse's dressing room in Tokyo's Minato Ward in February this year, the source said. The bathhouse reported the incident to the police.
The diplomat has been dismissed as a counsellor but is immune to arrest in accordance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which states that diplomats cannot be arrested or detained in a country they have been dispatched to.
Although the diplomat admitted to police officers to photographing the student and has deleted some 700 images allegedly taken with the smartphone, he refused to voluntarily go to a police station or hand over his smartphone, the source said.
Police are investigating whether the diplomat violation any laws including one on child prostitution and child pornography.