Arya News - The inmate, Sunao Takami, 58, had been sentenced to death on charges including murder and arson.
OSAKA – A death row inmate convicted of killing five people in a 2009 arson attack on a pachinko parlor in Osaka was executed Friday at the Osaka Detention Center, the Justice Ministry announced.
The inmate, Sunao Takami, 58, had been sentenced to death on charges including murder and arson. The execution was Japan’s first in about a year and two months, since June last year, and the first carried out under the administration of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
According to the final court ruling, Takami poured gasoline inside a pachinko parlor in Osaka’s Konohana Ward on July 5, 2009, and set it on fire, killing five people, who were between the ages of 20 and 72 at the time. Ten other people suffered injuries ranging from minor to serious, including burns.
Justice Minister Hiroshi Hiraguchi, announcing the execution at a news conference, said: “He took the lives of five blameless people, injured 10 others and caused shock and fear throughout society. The anguish of the victims is beyond measure. After careful consideration, I ordered the sentence to be carried out.”
With Friday’s execution, the number of prisoners in Japan whose death sentences have been finalized stands at 100.
The Justice Ministry last carried out an execution in June last year, when Takahiro Shiraishi, then 34, was put to death. Shiraishi had been sentenced to death for murdering nine men and women in 2017 at an apartment in Zama, Kanagawa Prefecture.