A member of the US Air Force based in Japan was sentenced to five years in prison on Friday over an allegation of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a girl under age 16 last December, according to local media.

A court in the Okinawa province announced the ruling and sentenced Brennon Washington, 25, to jail time, Kyodo News reported.

Judge Tetsuro Sato called the acts of the US soldier "malicious," saying he had "disregarded the girl's decision-making in exercising sexual freedom."

Okinawa, which hosts 31 US military-exclusive facilities covering 70.3% of such sites nationwide by land area, is home to roughly half of the 50,000 US troops deployed in Japan under a bilateral security pact.

There were 118 criminal cases involving US military personnel in Japan in 2023, and of those, 72, or 61%, were committed in Okinawa, where US military-exclusive facilities are concentrated, according to Japanese news agency Mainichi Shimbun.

In 2022, Okinawa accounted for 51% of crimes committed by US military personnel in Japan, underscoring the disproportionate number caused by the region's high concentration of US bases. (Anadolu Agency, excluding headline)