Japan proceeded, Tuesday, December 21, to the execution of three prisoners, the first killings in nearly two years in the country and since the arrival of Fumio Kishida as head of government. 

He is a 65-year-old man convicted of the hammer-and-knife murder of seven members of his family and neighbors in 2004, and two men, 54 and 44, convicted of a double murder in 2003, she clarified.

The last execution in Japan dates back to December 2019, that of a Chinese convicted of the murders of four members of the same family in the southwest of the country in 2003. Japan had executed three convicts in 2019 and 15 in 2018, including 13 members of the Aum sect, involved in a sarin gas attack in the Tokyo metro in 1995.

The Japanese population's support for the death penalty remains strong despite criticism from abroad, in particular from human rights organizations.

"Whether or not to maintain the death penalty is a crucial question which concerns the foundations of the Japanese criminal justice system," Government Deputy Secretary General Seiji Kihara commented on Tuesday at a press briefing.

 "As atrocious crimes continue to be committed, the death penalty must be imposed on those who have perpetrated acts of such gravity and atrocity as is inevitable," he added. .

A hundred condemned to death 

Japan, the only industrialized democracy with the United States to still pass the death penalty, currently has more than 100 people on death row, and long years generally elapse between the issuance of the sentence and its execution by hanging.

In addition, detainees are usually notified only hours before their execution, a practice criticized by human rights groups.

In early November, two death row inmates launched legal action against the Japanese government, denouncing this practice as illegal, which they claim is a source of psychological problems.

"It violates human dignity," their lawyer told AFP, explaining that executions were generally announced to convicts only one to two hours before, preventing them from seeing their lawyer or filing an appeal.

Separately, in December 2020, the Japanese Supreme Court overturned a decision that blocked the request for a review of the trial of Iwao Hakamada, a man now aged 85 who is considered the oldest condemned to death in the world.

Iwao Hakamada has spent more than four decades on death row after his death row in 1968 for the quadruple murder of his boss and three of his family members. This Japanese had confessed to the crime after weeks of interrogation in detention before retracting. He had been proclaiming his innocence ever since, but the conviction was confirmed in 1980.

When the death penalty is applied in Japan, the convicts, whose hands are handcuffed and blindfolded, are led above a trap door which opens under their feet, by means of a mechanism triggered by one of the three buttons. attached to the wall of an adjoining room, pressed simultaneously by three guards who ignore which one is active.

NGOs such as Amnesty International have been calling for the end of the death penalty for decades.

With AFP and Reuters

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