Pat Dollard

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NAGOYA, April 17 (AP) – (Kyodo)—(EDS: ADDING INFORMATION, ANOTHER LEAD STORY TO FOLLOW)

The Nagoya High Court on Thursday found the dispatch of Air Self- Defense Force troops to Iraq unconstitutional, marking the first court decision that declared the dispatch to be against the Constitution.

In the decision, Presiding Judge Kunio Aoyama said the ASDF’s airlifting activities to and from Iraq run counter to the war- renouncing Constitution.

The three-judge high court panel acted on a suit filed by a group of citizens who sought suspension of the dispatch to Iraq of the ASDF and the Ground Self-Defense Force and the payment of consolation money, saying the dispatch violates the Constitution.

In April 2006, the Nagoya District Court turned down the suit, giving no judgment on the constitutionality of the deployment of the Self- Defense Forces to Iraq.

The lower court said in the decision that the suit “is illegal as it does not involve any specific right or duties…there is no room for the plaintiffs to exercise their rights of claim.”

Former Japanese Ambassador to Lebanon Naoto Amaki is one of the plaintiffs in the suit.

Completely irrelevant, but hot picture