Japan executed a man on Friday that killed nine people after contacting them on social networks, the first use of capital punishment in the country in almost three years.
Takahiro Shiraishi had been sentenced to death for his strangulation and dismemberment of eight women and a man in his department in the city of Zama in Kanagawa, near Tokyo. He was called the “Twitter murderer” when he contacted the victims through the social media platform.
Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki, who authorized Shiraishi’s Hanging, said he decided after a careful exam, taking into account the “extremely selfish” motive of the convict for crimes that “caused a great shock and concern to society.”
The execution in July 2022 of a man who stabbed in the commercial district of Tokyo Akihabara in 2008 was followed.
It was also the first time that a death penalty was carried out since the government of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba was inaugurated last October.
In September last year, a Japanese court acquitted Iwao Hakamada, who had spent the longest time in the world in the death corridor after an illicit conviction for crimes committed almost 60 years ago.
The capital punishment is carried out in Japan, and the prisoners are notified of their execution hours before it is carried out, which for a long time has been denounced by the human rights groups for the stress that it puts in the prisoners of the death row.
“It is not appropriate to abolish the death penalty, while these violent crimes are still being committed,” Suzuki said at a press conference. There are currently 105 inmates convicted of death in Japan, he added.
