Photo/Illutration Yuki Watanabe at Haneda Airport in Tokyo on Feb. 9 (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Fresh arrest warrants were served on Sept. 12 in connection with a robbery-murder in western Tokyo in January that was traced to a Japanese crime ring operating in the Philippines, police said.

Yuki Watanabe, 39, Kiyoto Imamura, 39, Toshiya Fujita, 39, and Tomonobu Kojima, 45, are believed to have given instructions from an immigration detention center in Manila for the burglary in Komae that led to the death of a 90-year-old resident.

The four, who have been in the custody of Tokyo police since being deported from the Philippines in February, are suspected of robbery-murder and home-invasion.

The Metropolitan Police Department has not disclosed whether the suspects have admitted to the allegations.

Watanabe is believed to have led the crime ring, while the three others were senior members of the group, police said.

They have been tied to a string of fraud cases and violent robberies committed across Japan.

Police said multiple people who shared detention cells in Manila with the suspects said they witnessed the Japanese giving instructions for the Komae heist.

Four men acting on such instructions sent via smartphone broke into the house in Komae around 11:30 a.m. on Jan. 19, investigators said.

The intruders kicked resident Kinuyo Oshio in the stomach and hit her with a crowbar, leading to her death.

Luxury watches and rings worth around 600,000 yen ($4,090) in total were taken from the home.

Oshio was found unconscious about five and a half hours later in the corridor of the basement of the two-story building.

Her wrists were bound, her head was bleeding, and bruises covered her body. She was confirmed dead at the scene.

Rikuto Nagata, 21, unemployed, and three other men have been indicted on charges of robbery resulting in death.

Watanabe, Imamura and Fujita were also arrested in August on suspicion of ordering a break-in in Tokyo’s Adachi Ward on Jan. 20.

Burglars used a crowbar to enter the home, but no one was present and nothing was stolen, police said.

Risa Yamada, 27, was also arrested over her suspected role in the Adachi case and has been indicted on theft charges.

At the time of the burglary in Komae, Yamada was with the four suspects at the Philippine detention center.

“A senior member saw the news of the Komae incident on his smartphone and said, ‘I didn’t think the grandmother would die,’” sources quoted Yamada as saying.

The robberies that began around 2022 involved people recruited through shady online job offers, investigators said.

Police intensified their investigations following the Komae robbery, the only case with a fatality, and found the connection to the Philippines.

Police discovered that instructions had been given by people calling themselves “Luffy” and “Kim,” and traced the calls to the Southeast Asian country.

Imamura was earlier indicted in connection with a robbery in Kyoto in May last year and another robbery resulting in injury in Chiba Prefecture in January this year.

The mobile phone number used by the “instructor” in both cases was also used by a person who gave instructions on renting a car used in the Komae burglary, police said.

Based on this evidence, police decided that the four suspects gave orders in the Komae case.

Watanabe, Fujita and Kojima have also been indicted on theft charges.

(This article was written by Yuji Masuyama, Minami Endo and Shomei Nagatsuma.)

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