EX-OFFICERS IN DRUG COVERUP CASE INDICTED

TOYAMA (Kyodo) Former Toyama Prefectural Police Chief Masafumi Ueda
and another former senior officer were indicted Friday on charges of
covering up a drug case involving a police informant.

Ueda, 53, and Minoru Takamatsu, 62, the former head of the
prefecture's criminal investigation bureau, were charged with
fabricating investigative documents and using them in connection with
the case, prosecutors said.

Toyama police on Nov. 9 sent case papers on 13 police officers,
including Ueda and Takamatsu, to the Toyama District Public
Prosecutor's Office. The prosecutors decided not to indict the 11
other officers.

"The two committed the crime while they held top posts at the Toyama
Prefectural Police and thus we have concluded they bear grave
criminal responsibility," a prosecutor said.

They are accused of releasing Shinichi Tsuchida, 39, a civil
engineer, on May 18, 1995, a day after he was arrested on suspicion
of using stimulants, because he was an informant in a separate
amphetamine racketing case.

Toyama police won a national police award in September 1995 for the
stimulant racketing investigation.

Ueda resigned as head of the Chubu Regional Police Bureau of the
National Police Agency in early November when the coverup was
exposed. Takamatsu had already left the force.

Ueda joined the NPA in 1971 and served as head of a team
investigating a coverup scandal involving the Niigata Prefectural
Police which came to light in February 2000.