Jul 13 (Japan Times) - Japan hanged two death-row inmates Thursday morning, the Justice Ministry said, including a man convicted of multiple murders who had reportedly been seeking a retrial.
Masakatsu Nishikawa, one of the two executed inmates, had filed a plea for a retrial over the murders of four women in the 1990s. Nishikawa, 61, was convicted of murdering four bar managers in western Japan in 1991.
The other executed inmate was Koichi Sumida, 34, who was found guilty of killing a female colleague in 2011 in Okayama Prefecture.
Justice Minister Katsutoshi Kaneda ordered the executions, which were the 18th and 19th carried out since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe returned to power in December 2012.
The previous execution, the first ordered by Kaneda, was in November 2016, when a man was hanged for killing two women in Kumamoto Prefecture.
Kaneda told a news conference following the 2016 execution that the punishment was for "an extremely cruel case in which the precious lives of the victims were taken for selfish purposes. I gave the order after careful consideration."
In October 2016, the Japan Federation of Bar Associations issued a declaration calling for the abolition of capital punishment and the introduction of life sentences without parole by 2020.
Source: ANNnewsCH
