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28-06-2025
TOKYO: Japan executed a man on Friday 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 in Kanagawa near Tokyo. He was dubbed the “Twitter killer” as he contacted victims via the social media platform.
Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki, who authorised Shiraishi’s hanging, said he made the decision after careful examination, taking into account the convict’s “extremely selfish” motive for crimes that “caused great shock and unrest to society.”
It followed the execution in July 2022 of a man who went on a stabbing rampage in Tokyo’s shopping district Akihabara in 2008.
It was also the first time a death penalty was carried out since Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s government was inaugurated last October.
In September last year, a Japanese court acquitted Iwao Hakamada, who had spent the world’s longest time on death row after a wrongful conviction for crimes committed nearly 60 years ago.
Capital 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.
“It is not appropriate to abolish the death penalty while these violent crimes are still being committed,” Suzuki told a press conference. There are currently 105 death row inmates in Japan, he added.
In December, 2020, Tokyo district court sentenced a man to death for the 2017 murders of nine people, local media reported, ending a case that grabbed headlines in Japan with the culprit dubbed “Twitter killer” for contacting victims via the social media platform.
Takahiro Shiraishi, 30, was found guilty of murdering, dismembering and storing the bodies of the nine in his apartment in Zama city in Kanagawa, on the outskirts of Tokyo, the report said.
In court the prosecution argued Shiraishi made contact with victims via Twitter after they expressed suicidal thoughts, the media reported. Using a handle which loosely translates as “hangman”, Shiraishi invited them to his apartment in Zama, promising to help them die, sources said, citing the indictment.
Shiraishi’s defence lawyers argued Shiraishi killed the victims with their approval, Kyodo said.
Presiding Judge Naokuni Yano ruled the victims did not consent to being killed and that Shiraishi was mentally fit to be held responsible for their murders.
Twitter Japan was not immediately available for comment.
According to the indictment, Shiraishi strangled and dismembered eight women and one man aged 15 to 26 from August to October 2017, Kyodo said. He was also alleged to have sexually assaulted all his female victims, the report added.
Shiraishi said before the trial that even if given the death penalty he would not appeal, according to Japanese media.
In Japan the death penalty is executed by hanging, with execution dates not made public until after the penalty is carried out. (Int’l News Desk)
