A federal judge on Thursday rejected a Manhattan doctor’s bid to stop his extradition to Japan, where he faces charges that he vandalized two ancient religious sites.
The ruling could clear the way for the doctor, Masahide Kanayama, to be sent to Japan next week, after nearly a decade of litigation over his case.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, which opposed Dr. Kanayama’s effort to stop his extradition, declined to comment on the ruling. But federal prosecutors said in court papers that Dr. Kanayama had agreed to surrender to the U.S. Marshals Service on Monday and to be transferred to Japanese custody the next day. They had characterized his petition as a “last-minute gambit to avoid extradition.”
In his ruling on Thursday, Judge J. Paul Oetken of U.S. District Court in Manhattan wrote that Dr. Kanayama’s case had “received ample and thoughtful consideration from several judges,” as it wended its way through the federal courts. The judge noted that the Supreme Court had also denied Dr. Kanayama’s applications for a stay, which would have paused his removal.
“Staying Kanayama’s extradition at this juncture, on the eve of his long-pending removal to Japan, would certainly prejudice the government,” Judge Oetken wrote. He noted that the United States had a strong interest in honoring extradition treaties with other countries.
Dr. Kanayama’s lawyer, Michael Zigismund, said he planned to appeal the ruling.
“Our position has been, and is, if any case were to be an edge case, it would be exactly this case,” he said. “The unfortunate thing is, there aren’t too many days left.”
A surgeon and expert in endometriosis, Dr. Kanayama, 63, is a Japanese citizen and legal permanent resident of the United States who has practiced medicine in Manhattan for nearly three decades. His patients have said his surgeries ended years of crippling pain and, in some cases, allowed them to have children.
Dr. Kanayama is also a practicing Christian and the founder of the International Marketplace Ministry, which focuses on personal relationships to God through prayer in daily life and work, Mr. Zigismund said in court papers.
In 2015, the Japanese authorities said, Dr. Kanayama left an oily liquid on a thousand-year-old Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Tokyo and, less than an hour later, on a nearby Shinto shrine founded in 643 B.C. during the reign of Japan’s first emperor.
Dr. Kanayama’s lawyers have said that he did not vandalize any religious sites, and that “his actions damaged nothing.”
The Japanese authorities have said that they traced the vandalism to Dr. Kanayama through surveillance footage at the two sites along with car rental, toll and flight records. They also cited YouTube videos from 2012 that showed a man who Japanese officials said was Dr. Kanayama talking about anointing shrines with oil for religious purposes.
Japan asked the United States to extradite Dr. Kanayama in 2016. In 2017, federal agents honored the Japanese government’s request and arrested Dr. Kanayama, who was later released on bail. Since then, federal courts have repeatedly rejected Dr. Kanayama’s efforts to stop his extradition.
His lawyers have argued that Japan has been trying to prosecute Dr. Kanayama because he is Christian and of Korean descent. If convicted of the vandalism charges in Japan, he could face five years of hard labor in prison.
“Why would the government of Japan focus its resources so heavily on Dr. Kanayama as opposed to so many others who have similar vandalism charges against themselves,” Mr. Zigismund told Judge Oetken on Wednesday, according to a transcript of the hearing. The answer, Mr. Zigismund said, is “precisely because of Dr. Kanayama’s position in the religious world. He’s the head or one of the heads of a particular branch of Christianity that is on the outs in Japan.”
The Consulate General of Japan in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. But in November, the consulate said the extradition request made by the government of Japan was “based strictly on law and evidence.”
“It is a matter of law enforcement and is in no way motivated by political or religious considerations,” it said.
Benjamin Weiser contributed reporting.
Michael Levenson covers breaking news for The Times from New York.
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