Japan executes ‘Twitter killer' Takahiro Shiraishi who murdered 9: reports
Japan has executed a death row prisoner, public broadcaster NHK and other media outlets said on Friday, the first time since 2022 that the country has enacted capital punishment.
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The justice ministry declined to confirm the hanging but NHK, citing government sources, said the prisoner was 34-year-old Takahiro Shiraishi, who murdered nine people in 2017.
Shiraishi - dubbed the 'Twitter killer' - was sentenced to death for murdering and dismembering nine people he met on the social media platform, now called X.
Shiraishi is said to have lured his mostly female victims, aged between 15 and 26, to his flat near Tokyo, where he killed them and cut up their bodies.
He admitted murdering all nine, having made contact with suicidal victims on Twitter and offered to help them die, before stashing bits of bodies in coolers around his small flat, according to media reports.
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Japan and the United States are the only two members of the Group of Seven industrialised economies to retain the death penalty.
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