INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Japan has executed a man 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, 34, was hanged for killing his victims, aged between 15 and 26, after contacting them on the social
media platform now called X.All but one victim were women.He was sentenced to death in 2020 for strangling and dismembering nine people in
his apartment in Zama city, about 60 kilometres from Tokyo.Shiraishi targeted users who posted about taking their own lives, telling them he
them to his small home near the capital, he stashed parts of their bodies around the apartment in coolers and toolboxes sprinkled with cat
litter in a bid to hide the evidence.His lawyers argued Shiraishi should receive a prison sentence rather than be executed because his
in 2017 by police investigating the disappearance of a 23-year-old woman who had reportedly tweeted about wanting to kill herself.Her
dismembered bodies.Locals support capital punishmentExecutions are always done by hanging in Japan, and nearly half of the approximately 100
prisoners on death row are seeking a retrial, according to Mr Suzuki.Japanese law requires executions to be carried out within six months of
a verdict after appeals are exhausted, but most inmates are left waiting in solitary confinement for years, sometimes decades.In September
practice.Prisoners in Japan 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.Despite this, there is strong support for capital punishment among the Japanese
