‘Twitter killer’ who murdered nine hanged in Japan’s first execution since 2022

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 could help them in their plans, or even die alongside them.

Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki, who ordered Shiraishi’s execution, said his crimes included “robbery, rape, murder … destruction of a corpse and abandonment of a corpse”.

He said Shiraishi acted “for the genuinely selfish reason of satisfying his own sexual and financial desires” and the murders “caused great shock and anxiety to society”.

After luring 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 victims had expressed suicidal thoughts and so had consented to die.

But a judge dismissed that argument, calling Shiraishi’s crimes “cunning and cruel” and saying he preyed upon people who were “mentally fragile”, according to reports at the time.

The grisly murders were discovered in 2017 by police investigating the disappearance of a 23-year-old woman who had reportedly tweeted about wanting to kill herself.

Her brother gained access to her Twitter account and eventually led police to Shiraishi’s residence, where investigators found the nine dismembered bodies.

Locals support capital punishment

Executions 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 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.

There is widespread criticism of the system and the government’s lack of transparency over the 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 public.

The last execution, carried out in 2022, was of a man who went on a stabbing rampage in Tokyo’s shopping district Akihabara in 2008.

“It is not appropriate to abolish the death penalty while these violent crimes are still being committed,” Mr Suzuki said.

Source: AFP/Reuters
--Agencies