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From a news article:

福島県いわき市の建設会社「武蔵建設」の敷地に男性の遺体を埋めたとして、死体遺棄容疑で同社の元社長ら男６人が逮捕された事件で、県警は７日、強盗殺人容疑で６人を再逮捕した。

What role is として fulfilling?

It seems like it may be functioning as a sort of and? My best attempt at translation is that we are just talking about:

An incident in which a body was burried and abandoned.

But I'm sure I'm at least missing some nuance, if not getting it totally wrong. So what is として doing here?

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Here として is "as", or "in the role of". It sets a (potentially hypothetical) role and then describes conclusions/results based on that role. In the quoted story, it sets up the "role/action" for which the six men were initially arrested.

Rough translation (abbreviating the company name and location):

(For their possible) role in burying a man's corpse on "A Company" grounds, on suspicion of dumping dead bodies, six former presidents from the same company were arrested. On the 7th, on suspicion of murder connected to armed robbery, the six men were re-arrested by prefecture police.

For more information on this usage please see the section on とする of Tae Kim's Guide (http://www.guidetojapanese.org/learn/grammar/reasoning)

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  • So then is attaching として to a past verb like that similar to attaching 容疑 to a noun as also happens in the example sentence? – Aurast Jun 7 '16 at 17:32
  • Not sure what exactly you mean by "similar", can you elaborate? I think 容疑 is more the "formal suspicion/charge/allegation" by the police themselves. Eg, in American crime stories you might see "charged with first degree murder" (this is the 容疑). But if you see "So-and-so was charged with first degree murder for their suspected involvement in <details of crime>", that "for their suspected involvement in" is roughly what the として is doing here. – WeirdlyCheezy Jun 7 '16 at 17:51

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