Photo/Illutration Yoshikazu Higashitani arrives at Narita Airport on June 4. (Hikaru Uchida)

Police in Tokyo effectively treated lawmaker-turned-YouTuber GaaSyy like a gangster on June 24 by serving him a fresh arrest warrant for allegedly intimidating witnesses on video-sharing sites.

Normally, the charge is used against organized crime members who threaten potential witnesses in face-to-face encounters to stop them testifying in court.

But in the case of GaaSyy, whose real name is Yoshikazu Higashitani, he is suspected of using social media to vent his anger at two individuals who filed criminal complaints with police.

Higashitani, 51, used to be an Upper House member.

He was indicted earlier for threatening to use YouTube to damage the reputations of three individuals.

A high-ranking police official said Higashitani was rearrested so other possible victims could go to the police without fear of being intimidated.

“It was an egregious act intended to delay the investigative process and we decided to make a case of it in order to restrain similar acts in the future,” the police official said.

According to investigators, an actor and a designer consulted with the Metropolitan Police Department in Tokyo after they were singled out over YouTube by Higashitani.

Police decided last December their criminal complaints had merit.

But from February, Higashitani posted social media videos that police now believe were an attempt to silence the pair.

In one video targeting the actor, Higashitani is seen saying, “You better be prepared to appear in court after carefully thinking about how such an appearance will have a fatal effect on your status as a celebrity.”

In late February, Higashitani posted another video targeting the male designer in which he said, “You scum, think carefully about all the trouble you have caused your wife and children.”

Higashitani is on record as saying he would never forgive anyone who filed a criminal complaint against him.

When he posted those videos in February, Higashitani was still a member of the Upper House. But he was later expelled because he never once appeared in the chamber to work as a lawmaker.

Higashitani was in Dubai at the time the videos were posted and he never responded to Tokyo police requests to submit to voluntary questioning. Dubai police deported him in early June and Tokyo police arrested him upon his arrival at Narita Airport.