Japan hangs 'Twitter killer' in first execution since 2022

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.

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” because he contacted victims via the social media platform.

Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki, who authorized 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.”

A court sketch of Shiraishi in 2020.Masato Yamashita / JIJI PRESS/AFP via Getty ImagesIt followed the execution in July 2022 of a man who went on a stabbing rampage in Tokyo’s Akihabara shopping district 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.