A senior Japanese Football Association official has been sentenced to an 18-month suspended jail term in France for viewing photos of child pornography on a plane, a court official said Tuesday.
Masanaga Kageyama, the Japanese Football Association’s technical director, was arrested last week during a stopover at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport on his route to Chile, according to Le Parisien newspaper.
It is believed he was on his way to the Under-20 World Cup in Chile.
“The facts were discovered by the plane’s flight crew, who raised the alarm after noticing that the convicted man was viewing child pornography images on the plane,” the court prosecutor’s office in Bobigny, north of Paris, told AFP.
On Monday, the court sentenced the 58-year-old to an 18-month suspended prison sentence and a 5,000 euro ($5,830) fine for importing, possessing, recording, or preserving pornographic pictures of a kid under the age of 15.
His sentence includes a 10-year prohibition on working with kids as well as a decade-long restriction on returning to France.
Kageyama will also be put on the French national sex offender registry.
According to Le Parisien, flight attendants caught him viewing images on his laptop in the business class cabin of an Air France flight.
He claimed to be an artist and stated that the photographs were created using artificial intelligence.
According to the report, during his court appearance, he admitted to viewing the images, not realizing it was illegal in France, and feeling ashamed.
He was in police detention throughout the weekend until his court appearance on Monday. He was discharged following the hearing.
Kageyama is in charge of adopting initiatives to boost Japan’s football teams, including the national team, as well as training coaches and developing young players.
He was a professional J-League footballer and has coached various J-League clubs. He previously managed Japan’s under-20, under-19, and under-18 teams.
