Japan Executes Man for 2009 Pachinko Parlour Arson
· World · BBC News, CBS News, ABC News (AU)
Japan has executed 58-year-old Sunao Takami for setting fire to a pachinko parlour in Osaka in 2009, an act that resulted in the deaths of five people. The execution is the first carried out in Japan in over a year and the first under the current Takaichi administration. Takami was sentenced to hang in 2011 after a jury and panel of judges rejected his defence that he was mentally ill at the time of the crime. Japan remains one of the few G7 nations that continues to impose the death penalty. Rights groups have long criticised the country's lack of transparency regarding the timing of executions and the use of prolonged solitary confinement for death-row inmates.
Why it matters
The execution marks a resumption of capital punishment in Japan, reigniting the debate over the country's judicial practices and its status as a G7 nation that retains the death penalty.
Read the original report — BBC News
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