A man convicted of murder for killing and dismembering nine people in his apartment near Tokyo was executed Friday, Japan's Justice Ministry said. Takahiro Shiraishi, known as the "Twitter killer," was sentenced to death in 2020 for the killings in 2017 of the nine victims, most of whom had posted suicidal thoughts on social media. He was also convicted of sexually abusing female victims. Police arrested him later that year after finding the bodies of eight teenage girls and women, as well as one man, in cold-storage cases in his apartment.
Investigators said Shiraishi approached the victims via Twitter, offering to assist them with their suicidal wishes. He killed the three teenage girls and five women after raping them. He also killed the boyfriend of one of the women to silence him. Shiraishi was hanged at the Tokyo Detention House in secrecy with nothing disclosed until the execution was done. Executions are carried out in secrecy in Japan, where prisoners are not even informed of their fate until the morning of their hanging. Shiraishi is the first person Japan has executed since 2022, when Tomohiro Kato, who killed seven people in a 2008 rampage that led to a change in knife laws, was hanged.
The execution was carried out as calls grow to abolish capital punishment or increase transparency in Japan after the acquittal of the world's longest-serving death row inmate, Iwao Hakamada, last year, the AP reports. Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki justified the need for execution in Japan, noting a recent government survey shows an overwhelming majority of the public still supports capital punishment, though opposition has somewhat increased. "The case caused the extremely serious outcomes and dealt a major shockwave and unease to the society," he said. Japan now has 105 people on death row, including 49 seeking retrials, Suzuki said.
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