Japan executes ‘Twitter killer' who murdered nine people
Japan has executed a man convicted of murdering and dismembering nine people in his apartment near Tokyo.
Takahiro Shiraishi, known as the 'Twitter killer', was sentenced to death for killing eight women and one man in 2017, most of whom had posted suicidal comments on social media.
Shiraishi was arrested later that year after police discovered the bodies in cold-storage cases in his apartment.
He had found the victims on Twitter and offered to assist them with their suicidal thoughts.
The 34-year-old raped the three teenage girls and five women before murdering them, as well as killing a boyfriend of one of the victims to silence him.
Keisuke Suzuki, the Japanese justice minister, said he signed the execution order earlier this week but did not witness Shiraishi's hanging.
He told an emergency press conference: 'The case caused extremely serious outcomes and dealt a major shock wave and unease to the society.'
Calls to abolish death penalty
Shiraishi's death has marked the first time since 2022 that Japan has enacted capital punishment.
Calls for the Japanese government to abolish the practice have continued to grow after the acquittal of Iwao Hakamada, the world's longest-serving death row inmate, in 2024.
Mr Suzuki justified the need for execution and insisted that the overwhelming majority of Japan's population still supported it.
'I believe it is not appropriate to abolish execution,' he said, adding that there is concern about the country's crime rate.
Some 105 criminals are on death row in Japan, with 49 seeking retrials, according to authorities.
Executions in Japan are so secret that prisoners are not even informed of their fate until the morning of their death.
Shiraishi was hanged at the Tokyo Detention House on Friday morning with nothing disclosed until after the execution.
Japan's most recent execution before Shiraishi was in July 2022 of a man convicted of killing seven people in a vehicle crash and stabbing rampage in a crowded shopping district in Tokyo four years earlier.
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