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Sunday World
8 hours ago
- Sunday World
Irish criminals on run from UK were part of ‘sophisticated' burglary gang
Limerick burglary gang leader Darren 'Joey' O'Halloran was also jailed with them for 12 years at Birmingham Crown Court in October 2023. Three members of a prolific Irish burglary gang have gone on the run after walking out of an open prison in the UK. They were serving lengthy sentences handed down in 2023 after being linked to a crime spree in which 54 homes were broken into over a three-month period. Police this week warned people not to approach Jason MacDonagh (34) who got a 13 year sentence, Daniel Harty (34), serving 12 years and Barney Casey (24) who got ten years. Limerick burglary gang leader Darren 'Joey' O'Halloran was also jailed with them for 12 years at Birmingham Crown Court in October 2023. The Ministry of Justice in the UK confirmed to the Sunday World this week that O'Halloran remains in custody. The three other men left Spring Hill Prison in Buckinghamshire last Monday evening according to police. They had been jailed in the UK for the spate of robberies in which st£350,000 worth of jewellery was stolen. The four men hit 54 homes in the space of just three months across the West Midlands, between November 2022 and January 2023. A video of one break-in shows the masked burglars calmly pulling a window off its hinges using crow bars before climbing through and into the property. In another clip released by police at the time, a gang member is seen holding an axe as others tried to break through a security gate. The thieves are also seen taking a run-up to kick open the door of another property and in another case, leaving with a safe. They were also caught on CCTV changing the reg-plate on one of the cars they were using. The gang were finally caught after detectives searched hours of CCTV which captured them using two getaway cars, an Audi R3 and a VW Golf. O'Halloran previously got a four-year prison sentence in Limerick for threatening to kill a garda detective and burn down his house. He had phoned the officer at Henry Street Garda to make the threats to the officer warning him to 'back off' the pursuit of his criminal gang. He told the detective 'we'll do no more crime if ye back off me and Aaron', referring to his brother, but became aggressive when told the gardaí would not back off. O'Halloran also threatened to 'finish' him saying: 'Go get your V6 Mondeo, I'll ram you off the road at 160 miles an hour.' He was found guilty by a jury and later lost an appeal against his conviction. The incident came after gardaí search O'Halloran's home looking for his brother Aaron who was on the run from gardaí after being involved in a high-speed chase. When O'Halloran and the other men were being sentenced at Birmingham Crown Court in 2023 they turned their backs on the judge and walked out of the dock. The court had heard how they were part of a 'sophisticated' group, which robbed £350,000 worth of jewellery, cash and other belongings. All four gang members, of no fixed address but originally from Ireland, were convicted of conspiracy to burgle and jailed at Birmingham Crown Court.
Telegraph
8 hours ago
- Business
- Telegraph
The gold-plated pensions costing taxpayers £400m a year
Taxpayers are spending more than £400m a year on gold-plated pensions for just 10,600 judges, new analysis shows. The average member of the Judicial Pension Scheme now receives £37,000 in pension contributions for each year of work, before being handed almost £40,000 a year in retirement. They have built up £4.5bn in taxpayer-funded pension entitlements, but pay up to 7pc towards the cost of their retirements. The figures come despite major reforms to public sector pensions in 2015 after rising costs pushed the Government to act. The Taxpayers' Alliance said judges should be moved into defined contribution schemes, while the Intergenerational Foundation said the 'profligate pension promises' would be funded by young people. There were 10,578 members of the Judicial Pension Scheme at the end of 2023-24, according to a Freedom of Information request made by The Telegraph. Judicial salaries ranged from £106,563 to £312,510 during the year, according to the Ministry of Justice. As public sector workers, they are entitled to guaranteed, inflation-linked pensions for life. The scheme's 6,162 working judges paid in 4.1pc of their salary on average. As their employer, the Ministry of Justice then added another 51.1pc at a cost of £229m. The required employer contribution increased to 62.6pc from April last year to keep pace with the rising costs of the scheme, but the amount paid in by employees has remained the same. Before 2012, judges did not have to contribute to their personal pensions and only paid towards benefits for their dependants. The scheme's pension payouts are also more generous than other key public sector schemes, with retirees receiving £39,400 on average – costing taxpayers another £180m a year, taking the total bill to £409m. By comparison, the average pension was around £16,600 for teachers and £12,300 for Armed Forces personnel, falling to £11,400 for NHS workers and £9,900 for retired civil servants. Liz Emerson, of the Intergenerational Foundation, said: 'Younger generations can only dream of similar pensions, but they will end up paying for these profligate promises via higher taxation, later retirements and lower pensions themselves. 'At the very least, the Government should levy National Insurance contributions on annual pensions that are higher than the average earnings of working-age adults.' Public sector pensions already cost the UK £54.3bn a year, despite being moved away from final salary schemes in 2015 amid fears they had become unaffordable. Payments are now based on a worker's average earnings, but the final salary entitlement for existing members was extended to 2022 after a legal challenge from members of the judicial and firefighters' pension schemes. Under the new system, judges have 2.5pc of their salary added to their pension each year, which is more than teachers, civil servants, NHS workers and Armed Forces personnel. John O'Connell, of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: ' Public sector pensions are extraordinarily generous with employer contributions, often outstripping those in the private sector. 'But what makes them particularly generous is the fact that they are gold-plated schemes, not based on the value of a pension pot, but on the average earnings of the employee, meaning they get topped up above and beyond what has already been contributed. 'On top of this, they are unfunded, coming not from an investment scheme, but general taxation. At the very least, ministers should be moving all public sector workers onto fully-funded, defined contribution schemes which are based on monies actually paid in.' A report published last year by the University College London Judicial Institute revealed that more than one in three judges planned to quit the profession within five years, citing poor working conditions and a continual loss of net earnings amid a backlog in the country's courts. The Senior Salaries Review body recommended a 4.75pc pay rise for members of the judiciary for 2025-26, but the Lord Chancellor reduced it to 4pc. A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: 'The Judicial Pension Scheme 2022 is designed to encourage top legal professionals to become judges who are vital to keeping the justice system running.'
Tokyo Reported
a day ago
- Tokyo Reported
Japan executes ‘Twitter Killer' Takahiro Shiraishi
TOKYO (TR) – The Ministry of Justice on Friday announced the execution of Takahiro Shiraishi, an inmate on death row over the murder and dismemberment of nine men and women. In 2020, a court convicted Takahiro Shiraishi, 34, of robbery, non-consensual sexual intercourse, murder and destruction of a corpse, reports Nippon News Network (June 27). In 2017, he killed the eight women and one man, aged 15 to 26, whom he had met on Twitter and other outlets at his apartment in Zama City. He also stole their valuables. He sexually assaulted the eight women before the murders. The one man was the boyfriend of one of the female victims who had gone looking for her. Some media outlets dubbed him the 'Twitter Killer.' Takahiro Shiraishi (X) During his trial, the main issue at trial was whether the victims had consented to being killed. However, the Tachikawa branch of the Tokyo District Court ruled that all nine victims had 'not consented.' Shiraishi was sentenced to death and the sentence was finalized. Following the execution, Keisuke Suzuki, the Minister of Justice, held an emergency press conference to explain the reasons for the execution. 'This has resulted in extremely serious consequences, with the young and precious lives of nine victims taken in the space of about two months, causing great shock and anxiety in society,' Suzuki said. 'I ordered the execution after extremely careful consideration.' This is the first execution in Japan in two years and 11 months. With this execution, the number of death row inmates in prisons nationwide is now 105.
a day ago
- Politics
Hanging of Zama Killer is Japan's First Execution Since 2022
Shiraishi Takahiro became the first person to be executed in Japan for nearly three years on June 27, 2025. He murdered nine people in 2017 in Zama, Kanagawa. From August to October 2017, Shiraishi lured victims to his apartment after getting to know them via social media. He sexually assaulted and strangled them before taking their money and dismembering the bodies. While his defense counsel initially appealed the first death sentence verdict, Shiraishi withdrew the appeal himself and the sentence was finalized in January 2021. The execution is the first since that of Katō Tomohiro on July 26, 2022, for a 2008 stabbing spree in Akihabara, Tokyo. Japan's Code of Criminal Procedure stipulates that the death penalty should be implemented within six months of the issuing of the sentence, but in fact this is almost never the case. From the beginning of 2000 to July 26, 2022, 98 death sentences were carried out. The shortest time span from sentencing to execution was 1 year, while the longest was 19 years and 5 months. The Ministry of Justice does not clarify any of the criteria on which the decision to execute a prisoner is based. In fact, in the past it was policy to not even publicly announce that an execution had been carried out. Disclosure of information on executions and the number of those executed only began in October 1998, under the direction of Minister of Justice Nakamura Shōzaburō. In September 2007, the justice minister of the time, Hatoyama Kunio, instructed the ministry to also release the name of each executed convict and the place of execution. Decisions about executions seem to reflect the thoughts and feelings of the minister of justice of the time. Sugiura Seiken, upon being appointed to that post in October 2005, for instance, openly declared that he would not issue an execution order on religious and philosophical grounds. Although he soon retracted the statement, amid criticism questioning his right as justice minister to refuse to carry out a duty stipulated by law, he did not end up signing an execution order during his tenure of roughly 11 months. Contrasting with Sugiura's attitude were the cases of those ministers who signed execution orders at the rapid pace of one every few months. Only nine people were executed from September 2009 to December 2012 under the administrations of the Democratic Party of Japan, whose justice ministers showed reluctance to carry out the penalty. Chiba Keiko, the DPJ's first justice minister, was originally opposed to the death penalty and had been one of a group of Diet members who called for its abolition. In July 2010, however, she signed the order to execute two death-row prisoners. Chiba witnessed the executions—a first for a Japanese justice minister—and expressed her desire that they should serve as an opportunity for a national debate over the death penalty. Toward that end, she set up a study group within the ministry to consider whether it should continue. In August of the same year, Chiba opened the Tokyo Detention House's execution chamber to the media for the first time, as well as the room it provides for prisoners to meet with religious representatives. Eda Satsuki, who was appointed justice minister in January 2011 under the DPJ government of Prime Minister Kan Naoto, stated at a press conference soon afterward that 'capital punishment is a flawed penalty'—although he later retracted the statement. In July of that year, Eda expressed his intention to not sign any execution orders for the time being since the study group on the issue established by Chiba was still meeting. That year no executions were carried out. The study group continued to meet under the next justice minister as well, but it convened for the last time in March 2012 without reaching any final conclusion, merely registering the various opinions expressed on both sides of the issue. When Japan introduced trial by jury in 2009, members of the public became involved in capital punishment decisions. In 2017, there was a string of executions of prisoners who were petitioning for retrial. Criticism was also raised inside and outside Japan in 2018 over the execution of 13 prisoners connected to the Aum Shinrikyō cult in the space of a few weeks. A recent high-profile case concerned Hakamata Iwao, who was sentenced to death in 1980 for the killing of four people in 1966. He maintained his innocence from prison and in 2014, Shizuoka District Court released him and granted him a retrial. The retrial began in 2023 and concluded in September 2024, with the court acquitting Hakamata after finding that investigators had fabricated evidence. The ruling came 58 years after his original arrest and 44 years after he was sentenced to death. Having been incarcerated for so many years with the death penalty hanging over him, Hakamata still has difficulty communicating with others. This story put the spotlight on capital punishment, sparking calls for reform. A panel including lawmakers, a former prosecutor general, and a former commissioner general of the National Police Agency released a statement in November 2024 calling for a halt on executions until authorities rethink the government's approach to capital punishment and institute fundamental changes to the system. (Translated from Japanese. Banner photo: The Tokyo Detention House, which contains an execution facility. © Jiji.)
Korea Herald
a day ago
- Business
- Korea Herald
Justice Ministry to add over 22,000 foreign seasonal workers in 2nd half
The South Korean government announced Friday plans to allocate some 22,700 foreign seasonal workers in the second half of this year, supporting rural farming and fishing communities experiencing labor shortages during the harvest season. The Ministry of Justice, which held a council meeting to review the allocation of overseas seasonal workers with the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries on Tuesday, announced it would assign 22,731 foreign workers to 100 local governments nationwide. The ministry stated that the decision reflects the urgent labor demands of farms and fisheries ahead of the upcoming harvest season. With the addition, a total of 95,700 foreign seasonal workers will be hired to work at South Korean farms or fisheries this year nationwide. Among them, 86,633 employees will work in agriculture, while 8,876 will be allocated to fisheries. Seoul has earlier announced plans to employ 72,684 of such workers in the first half. The 2025 figure for foreign seasonal workers represents a 41 percent increase compared to last year's 66,778. The government is also aiming to enhance language support services to minimize language barriers between foreign workers and local employers. Though the ministry previously assigned one interpreter when more than 100 workers with the same nationality were employed and up to two interpreters for more than 300, it decided to assign more interpreters for each language based on specific demand from the respective local governments. The measure was made to reduce misunderstandings and miscommunication, while improving work efficiency and the retention rate of workers.
