Japan executed a man on Friday, who murdered nine people after contacting them through social media – the first execution in the Asian country in nearly three years. Takahiro Shiraishi was sentenced to death for the 2017 strangulation and dismembering of eight women and one man in his apartment, in Zama city in Kanagawa (near Tokyo). He was identified as the “Twitter killer” because he contacted victims through the social media platform.
Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki who approved Shiraishi’s hanging said he made the decision after “carefully examining” the case and considering the convict’s “extremely selfish” motive for committing crimes that “caused great shock and unrest to society.”
It came after the execution in July 2022 of a man who went on a stabbing spree in Tokyo’s Akihabara shopping district in 2008. It was also the first death penalty execution to be carried out since Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s government was formed last October.
In September of last year, a Japanese court exonerated Iwao Hakamada, who had spent the longest amount of time in the world, on death row, after being wrongfully convicted for crimes that were committed almost 60 years ago.
In Japan, capital punishment is conducted by hanging and death-row prisoners are notified of their execution hours before, which human rights groups have long condemned due to the stress associated for death-row prisoners.
“It is not appropriate to abolish the death penalty while these violent crimes are still being committed,” Suzuki told a news conference. There are currently 105 death row inmates in Japan, he added.
