Japan has executed Takahiro Shiraishi, the murderer of nine people after contacting them via social media. This is the first time the country has carried out the death penalty since 2022.
Shiraishi was sentenced to death for raping and dismembering 8 women and 1 man at his apartment in Zama City, Kanagawa Prefecture, near Tokyo in 2017. He is known as the Twitter Assault for using this social media platform to reach the victim.
Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki, who approved the execution of the sentence, said he had carefully considered the decision, based on the extremely selfish motives of the crimes and the level of shocking and insecurity it caused to Japanese society.
This is the first death sentence since July 2022, when a man was executed for a mass stabbing in Akihabara shopping mall in 2008. This is also the first time a death sentence has been carried out since Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's government took office last October.
Previously, in September 2024, a Japanese court cleared Iwao Hakamada, who holds the record for the longest prison sentence in the world for a wrongful death sentence.
In Japan, the death penalty is carried out by hanging. The death sentence was only announced a few hours before the execution of the sentence, which has long been condemned by human rights organizations for creating heavy psychological pressure.
At the press conference, Minister Suzuki affirmed that the death penalty cannot be abolished while violent crimes continue. He said that there are currently 105 prisoners awaiting execution in Japan.
