[Archive Project No.0004]

* Donations for this case will be paid to JCLU, which supported the trial at that time.

The Iraq War began in March 2003 when the Bush administration in the United States said that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, but even after exploring Iraq after the collapse of the Hussein administration, there was a large amount. Weapons of mass destruction were not found. Japan actively supported the Iraq War and dispatched the Self-Defense Forces under the Iraq Special Measures Law to support postwar reconstruction.

In 2011, the Minister of Foreign Affairs announced that the decision of the Japanese government at that time was appropriate, as there were calls for verification so as not to make a mistake in future diplomatic and security decisions. After that, in December 2012, the verification results were compiled not on the validity of the Iraq War but on whether the response of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at that time was appropriate. However, this report was kept private and only a brief summary was published. When we requested information disclosure of this private report, etc., it was not disclosed, so in July 2015, Information Disclosure Clearinghouse filed an information disclosure lawsuit with the support of JCLU.

In the United States and Australia, the failure of intelligence gathering by intelligence agencies, the Netherlands examined the legal issues of the Iraq war, and the United Kingdom conducted a comprehensive examination up to the withdrawal of Iraq, including the policy decision process, and published the report. doing. The report prepared by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has 17 pages in text, but the reports in each country are hundreds of pages or more.

In both the district court and the high court, the Minister of Foreign Affairs said, "Disclosure of the non-disclosure portion may damage the relationship of trust with other countries or international organizations and may cause disadvantages in negotiations with other countries or international organizations. The plaintiff was defeated because it was judged that there was a good reason for admitting it, etc., but in the middle of the proceedings, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs changed the decision twice from non-disclosure, and part of the report. It is open to the public.

In the information disclosure proceedings, since there is no in-camera trial procedure in which only the court actually sees the non-public document and hears it, the applicability of the information type described in the non-disclosure part based on the defendant's claim and There is a limit to how it will determine the obstacles to becoming public . This limitation is particularly noticeable in Article 5.3 of the Information Disclosure Law (see below), but we take this decision as a clear highlight of this issue.

(Obligation to disclose administrative documents)

Article 5 When a disclosure request is made, the head of the administrative organ shall record any of the information listed in the following items (hereinafter referred to as "non-disclosure information") in the administrative document pertaining to the disclosure request. Except for, the relevant administrative document must be disclosed to the disclosure requester.

(Iii) "By making it public, there is a risk that the security of the country will be impaired, the relationship of trust with other countries or international organizations may be impaired, or there may be a disadvantage in negotiations with other countries or international organizations. Information for which there is a good reason to admit "

Article summarized by the plaintiff's agent on this matter (published in the March 2019 issue of the Jurisprudence Seminar)