Photo: JIJI PRESS / AFP / Getty Images
For: EFE
Saturday, November 23
Japan Hangs Three Death Row Inmates After Two Years Without Executions
Japan executed three prisoners sentenced to death by hanging, the first capital sentences carried out by the current Government after two years without executions in the country, according to the Ministry of Justice.
The inmates executed this Tuesday ( Yasutaka Fujishiro, of 65 years, Tomoaki Takanezawa, from 54, and Mitsunori Onogawa, from 44 ) are the first to be executed since the coming to power last October of Fumio Kishida, Prime Minister of Japan.
The last death sentence applied in Japan was in December 2019, during the administration of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The inmate Fujishiro was convicted of killing seven of his relatives in 2004 in Hyogo prefecture (western Japan) .
The other two inmates, Takanezawa and Onogawa, were sentenced to capital punishment for committing robberies in which they murdered two employees of two rooms of arcade machines known as “pachinko” in Gunma (central Japan) in 2003.
The first of the prisoners was executed in Osaka, in the west of the country, and the other two in Tokyo, as reported at a press conference by the Japanese Minister of Justice, Yoshihisa Furukawa.
Following today’s executions, there remain 108 prisoners sentenced to capital punishment in Japan awaiting their sentence, of which 59 have requested the review of the sentences, reported the Japanese Minister of Justice.
Last 17 December, the head of Justice, who is responsible for signing the death sentences in Japan, gave the order to carry out these executions.
Japan is together with the United States the only industrialized and democratic country that maintains capital punishment, and its reluctance to renounce this practice has been harshly criticized by organizations such as Amnesty International (AI).
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