BEIRUT: Less than 24 hours before Carlos Ghosn held his press conference in Beirut, the Japanese Ambassador to Lebanon Takeshi Okubo asked President Michel Aoun for “more cooperation” to “avoid negative repercussions on our friendly relations.”
The former chairman of the Renault-Nissan Group board of directors took refuge in Beirut on Dec. 30 after he left Japan illegally, where he was under house arrest.
Ghosn announced at the time that he “intends to speak freely to the press and is no longer hostage to a biased Japanese judicial system, where guilt is assumed.”
He said that he “did not escape justice, but rather freed myself from political injustice and persecution. Finally, I can freely communicate with the media, which is what I will do.”
The visit of Okubo on the eve of the press conference comes after the Japanese authorities sent an international arrest warrant last week to arrest Ghosn. Lebanon received the Interpol warrant and referred it to the judiciary.
The meeting between Aoun and Okubo was attended by both the Minister of State for Presidential Affairs in the caretaker government Salim Jreissati, and the Director General of General Security Major General Abbas Ibrahim.
Presidential media adviser Rafiq Shalala told Arab News that the Japanese envoy “stressed the importance of Lebanese cooperation in the Ghosn file.”
Okubo said: “The discussion dealt with historical bilateral relations and strong bonds of friendship between the two countries in various fields. We raised the issue of Ghosn and expressed our view on it. We said that the government and people of Japan are very concerned about the issue, especially in terms of his way out of Japan and his entry into Lebanon. I asked the president of the republic for more cooperation in this regard in order to avoid negative repercussions on our friendly relations, especially as I make intensive efforts to preserve the relations between the two peoples and the two countries.”
Ghosn is scheduled to hold his press conference at 3 p.m. on Wednesday in the headquarters of the Lebanese Press Syndicate. The organizers of the event told Arab News that “the number of journalists invited to attend the press conference amounted to about 150, including a small number of Japanese media personnel, while the rest are from foreign and local media.”
On the eve of the press conference, Lebanon’s caretaker justice minister, Albert Sarhan, reiterated that Ghosn is a Lebanese citizen and has the right to be treated on this basis.
Sarhan said that Lebanon “has not yet received any file related to the arrest warrant for Ghosn’s wife, Carole Ghosn.”
Japanese media had reported on Tuesday that “Japan’s prosecutors issued an arrest warrant for Carole Ghosn, accusing her of false testimony.”
The National News Agency (Lebanon Official News) confirmed that Carole Ghosn is “currently in Lebanon.”
Sarhan told the National News Agency that “the public prosecution received the red notice issued by the Interpol office in Japan related to the Ghosn case, and it will proceed with the required action in the light of it.”
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