Rape charges against U.S. Marine dropped in Japan

A U.S. Marine who was arrested on suspicion of raping a teenage girl in southern Japan was released after Japanese prosecutors dropped charges against him at the request of the alleged victim, the Foreign Ministry said Friday.

Staff Sgt. Tyrone Luther Hadnott, 38, was arrested in February on suspicion of raping a 14-year-old girl on the southern island of Okinawa, triggering a nationwide furor.

Hadnott was released after the girl withdrew her criminal complaint, according to Ryo Fukahori, a ministry official in charge of Japan-U.S. security.

As a result, the district prosecutor’s office in the prefectural capital of Naha decided to drop the charges against Hadnott. In the Japanese judicial system, rape charges can be filed only with a victim’s complaint.

U.S. military authorities said they were holding the Marine to conduct their own investigation, Kyodo News agency reported.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Tom Casey told reporters that the United States remained “very concerned about this incident” and had “great sympathies” for the girl and her family. He had no details about the legal process.

Japanese police had said that Hadnott admitted to investigators that he had forced the girl down and kissed her, but he denied raping her.

Hadnott’s Feb. 10 arrest, as well as a series of other damaging criminal accusations against some of the 50,000 American troops based in Japan, have inflamed public anger about the U.S. military presence.