Takahiro Shiraishi was hanged for the murders of eight ladies and one man whose physique components he hid in his small condominium.
Japan has executed a person who was discovered responsible of killing and dismembering nine people he made contact with on social media, the primary use of capital punishment within the nation in practically three years.
Takahiro Shiraishi was hanged on Friday after he was sentenced to loss of life for the 2017 murders of eight ladies and one man in his condominium in Zama metropolis in Kanagawa close to Tokyo.
He was dubbed the “Twitter killer” as he had contacted his victims by way of the social media platform, now generally known as X.
Shiraishi admitted to committing the murders after reaching out and providing to assist folks – who had been considering suicide – to die. He had stashed bits of the our bodies of his 9 victims in coolers round his small condominium, based on media reviews.
Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki, who authorised Shiraishi’s hanging, mentioned he made the choice after cautious examination of the case, taking into consideration the convict’s “extraordinarily egocentric” motive for crimes that “prompted nice shock and unrest to society”.
The execution on Friday was the primary in Japan since July 2022 of a person sentenced to loss of life for a stabbing rampage in Tokyo’s Akihabara procuring district in 2008.
It was additionally the primary time the loss of life penalty was carried out since Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s authorities was inaugurated final October.
Final September, a Japanese court acquitted Iwao Hakamada, who had spent the world’s longest time on loss of life row. The court docket discovered he was wrongfully convicted of crimes dedicated practically 60 years in the past.
One of many highest-profile executions in Japan was carried out in 2018 of the guru Shoko Asahara and 12 former members of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult, which orchestrated the 1995 sarin fuel assaults on Tokyo’s subway system that killed 14 folks and made 1000’s sick.
Capital punishment is carried out by hanging in Japan, and prisoners are notified of their execution simply hours earlier than it’s carried out, which has lengthy been decried by human rights teams for the stress it places on death-row prisoners.
Japan and america are the one two members of the Group of Seven industrialised economies to retain the loss of life penalty.
There may be robust public assist for the follow in Japan. A authorities survey in 2024 of 1,800 respondents discovered that 83 p.c considered the loss of life penalty as “unavoidable”.
