High school students from Kyoto, Japan, placed what was reported to be a homemade explosive in the middle of a street and then detonated it. It came to light on June 24 that the students also filmed the explosion, which they uploaded to YouTube. The incident is creating much controversy online, and has even caught the attention of Kyoto police who have called the suspects in for voluntary questioning, following a series of similar videos uploaded by the same youths.
According to Kyoto police, the scenes depicted in the videos could be enough to infringe Japan’s Criminal Regulations to Control Explosives laws. Another possibility is that the incidents could breach the Minor Offense Act. Kyoto police commented,
“At this stage we cannot deny the possibility of a prosecution. We will continue to investigate the matter with the utmost care.”
From another piece of footage, an explosion can be seen occurring right next to a passerby. It is thought that the youths used some sort of remote control to deliberately detonate the explosive from afar. On June 21, the same video made its way onto an internet forum resulting in a barrage of criticism from netizens with comments such as, “That is seriously irresponsible and dangerous.” The videos have since been removed from YouTube, however there is fear that this could create a trickle of “copycat” video uploads.
Police in the area said that, thanks to netizens’ cooperation, the problem was quickly brought to their attention. On June 22, the suspects were called in for voluntary questioning regarding the contents of the video and the precise details of how the explosives was made.
Source: Sankei News