TOKYO, Sept. 24 (UPI) -- China will send an airplane to retrieve a Chinese trawler captain whose detention by Japan increased tensions between the two countries, officials said.
Japanese prosecutors said they decided to release fishing captain Zhan Qixiong because he had no criminal record and didn't intend to deliberately ram Japanese patrol boats with his trawler, the BBC reported.
Japan had accused Zhan of deliberately ramming the trawler into the two vessels near disputed islands in the East China Sea and arrested him Sept. 8. China called his detention "illegal and invalid."
China says two Japan Coast Guard patrol boats and a Chinese trawler collided in waters off the Diaoyu Islands on Sept. 7 and the next day the coast guard seized the trawler, detaining the captain and 14 fishermen on board, China's state-run news agency Xinhua reported. The crew members were released.
"I reiterate that any form of the so-called judicial procedures taken by Japan against the Chinese captain is illegal and invalid," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said in Beijing.
Beijing cut ministerial-level contacts with Japan and blocked thousands of Chinese tourists from visiting Japan, the BBC reported. Chinese organizers also canceled concerts by Japan's top boy band, SMAP, in Shanghai.
