Abe says World War II leaders tried by allies cannot be considered war criminals

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in the Diet on Friday that Japanese World War II leaders tried and convicted by the U.S. and its allies cannot be considered war criminals.

Referring to the 14 Japanese convicted as Class-A war criminals by the tribunal's justices from 11 nations and who are now enshrined at Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, Abe said they had stood trial for crimes against peace and humanity "but it was a concept established at that time, and based on the principle that crimes and penalties must be defined by law it is ridiculous to call them criminals. That also was the case for my relative."

Abe, 52, is the grandson of Nobusuke Kishi, who served in the wartime cabinet and helped supervise the industrialization of Manchukuo, the puppet state Japan set up in northeastern China.

Kishi was jailed by U.S. forces as a top war criminal after the war, although he was not tried by the Tokyo tribunal. He later served as prime minister from 1957 to 1960.

Abe said that war criminals should have been freed when Japan signed the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, which ended the U.S. occupation of Japan.

"Japan was not in a position to lodge objections over its relations with other countries when signing the treaty," he noted. "These people were not tried under Japanese laws, and I, as prime minister, must not decide whether they are war criminals or not."