The Tokyo High Court on Friday dismissed appeals brought by the relatives of five men convicted in the so-called Yokohama Incident, the nation's worst case of repression of journalistic freedom during the war.
The high court supported a lower court decision that the case had to be terminated because the five men had been given a general amnesty after the war and the anticommunist law under which they were charged had been abolished.
The relatives of the five, who are all deceased, were seeking a retrial to clear their names. They claim the five were wrongfully charged because they were tortured into confessing.