NAHA, Okinawa — A Japanese prosecutor has recommended an American civilian employee on Camp Foster be imprisoned 18 months for abusing a stimulant.
Christopher S. Dimitriadis, 35, a Marine Corps Community Services employee, pleaded guilty Wednesday to a charge of injecting himself with the drug phenylmethyl aminopropane inside a bathroom of a supermarket in Ginowan’s Aragusuku district Jan. 15.
“The defendant’s needle-scarred arms tell that he is addicted to the stimulant drug,” prosecutor Yukio Nakajima said during the hearing.
He said Dimitriadis was “criminally responsible” for using a drug “which is secretly spreading in the Japanese community.”
The drug is an amphetamine-like concoction usually made by underground chemists.
Dimitriadis testified he spent nearly $40,000 — all of his savings — on the drug in the five months before he was arrested by Japanese narcotic control officers.
He said he bought the substance from a drug dealer he met while gambling at the island’s pachinko parlors.
He became addicted to playing pachinko and slot machines, and using the drug, due to depression he suffered from being separated from his Japanese wife, he told the court.
By the time he was arrested, he was shooting up 10 times a day, he testified.
“It was almost suicidal,” he said.
Judge Shinichi Rai asked Dimitriadis if he ever wondered what his future would be like if he continued to be an addict.
“Every day I was using the stimulant, I was terrified, thinking what is going to happen,” Dimitriadis said, his head bowed.
Earlier in the hearing, he fought back tears as his wife told the judge she would give her husband whatever support he needed to rehabilitate himself.
Sentencing is set for March 5.
