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 almost three years.
Takahiro Shiraishi was hanged on Friday after he was sentenced to demise 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 through the social media platform, now referred to as X.
Shiraishi admitted to committing the murders after reaching out and providing to assist individuals – 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, in response to media reviews.
Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki, who authorised Shiraishi’s hanging, stated he made the choice after cautious examination of the case, considering the convict’s “extraordinarily egocentric” motive for crimes that “induced nice shock and unrest to society”.
The execution on Friday was the primary in Japan since July 2022 of a person sentenced to demise for a stabbing rampage in Tokyo’s Akihabara purchasing district in 2008.
It was additionally the primary time the demise 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 demise row. The courtroom discovered he was wrongfully convicted of crimes dedicated almost 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 gasoline assaults on Tokyo’s subway system that killed 14 individuals and made hundreds unwell.
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 the USA are the one two members of the Group of Seven industrialised economies to retain the demise penalty.
There’s sturdy public assist for the apply in Japan. A authorities survey in 2024 of 1,800 respondents discovered that 83 p.c seen the demise penalty as “unavoidable”.
