Serial killer on death row executed
It was the first time since July 2022 that a death row inmate was executed, and the first under Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's administration.
Takahiro Shiraishi was sentenced to death in 2020 by the Tokyo District Court's Tachikawa branch, which described his acts as a 'malicious crime in criminal history' for killing nine people in the space of two months. The ruling was later finalized.
According to the ruling, Shiraishi killed a man and eight women between the ages of 15 and 26 in his apartment in Zama, Kanagawa Prefecture, targeting those who had expressed suicidal thoughts on social media.
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