Army to court martial soldier for rape in Japan

TOKYO — The U.S. military will court martial an American soldier accused of raping a Filipino woman in southern Japan, the Army said Wednesday, after Japanese authorities dropped charges against him. Army specialist Ronald Hopstock, 25, who allegedly assaulted the woman in an Okinawa hotel room in February, will be the latest in a series of U.S. military personnel to be tried for attacks on women in Japan this year.

Hopstock will be court martialed in February 2009, Army spokeswoman Amanda Kraus said. Details of the trial, including the date and venue, have not been announced.

Japanese prosecutors dismissed the rape charges in May after finding insufficient evidence. Army investigators have since pursued the case.

Hopstock faces three additional charges of sodomy, soliciting a prostitute and disobeying lawful order, but those charges are not related to the alleged rape, Kraus said. He is assigned to Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, but the Army did not name his hometown.

Japan hosts 50,000-strong U.S. troops, most of them on Okinawa.

In May, a U.S. court martial found a 38-year-old Marine, initially accused of raping a 14-year-old Japanese girl February in Okinawa, guilty of a lesser charge and sentenced him to four years in prison.

A U.S. military tribunal in Iwakuni, southwestern Japan, sentenced four Marines to prison earlier this year for gang-assaulting a 20-year-old woman in the city of Hiroshima last year.