Tokyo
\nJapan executed on Friday a man who killed nine people after contacting them on social media, the first use of capital punishment in the country in nearly three years.
\nTakahiro Shiraishi had been sentenced to death for his 2017 strangling and dismembering of eight women and one man in his apartment in Zama city in Kanagawa near Tokyo. He was dubbed the \u201cTwitter killer\u201d as he contacted victims via the social media platform.
\nJustice Minister Keisuke Suzuki, who authorised Shiraishi\u2019s hanging, said he made the decision after careful examination, taking into account the convict\u2019s \u201cextremely selfish\u201d motive for crimes that \u201ccaused great shock andunrest to society.\u201d
\nIt followed the execution in July 2022 of a man who went on a stabbing rampage in Tokyo\u2019s shopping district Akihabara in 2008.
\nIt was also the first time a death penalty was carried out since Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba\u2019s government was inaugurated last October.
\nIn September last year, a Japanese court acquitted Iwao Hakamada, who had spent the world\u2019s longest time on death row after a wrongful conviction for crimes committed nearly 60 years ago.
\nCapital punishment is carried out by hanging in Japan and prisoners are notified of their execution hours before it is carried out, which has long been decried by human rights groups for the stress it puts on death-row prisoners.
\n\u201cIt is not appropriate to abolish the death penalty while these violent crimes are still being committed,\u201d Suzuki told a press conference.
\nThere are currently 105 death row inmates in Japan, he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tokyo Japan executed on Friday a man who killed nine people after contacting them on social media, the first use of capital punishment in the country in nearly three years. Takahiro Shiraishi had been sentenced to death for his 2017 strangling and dismembering of eight women and one man in his apartment in Zama city […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487024,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-487012","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n