A court in Japan convicted an alleged gangster and sentenced him to death yesterday for the fatal shooting of a popular mayor in a crime that stunned a nation that takes pride in its rigid gun-control laws.
The defendant was convicted of murder and sentenced to death yesterday in Nagasaki District Court, court spokesman Hiroyuki Mano said. Prosecutors had sought the death penalty, while the defense had argued that was too harsh.
Mayor Iccho Ito, 61, was shot twice in the back at close range outside a train station in April last year while campaigning for re-election for his fourth term.
The crime was lambasted as an act of violence that aimed to stifle democracy.
It also raised fears about guns on the streets as well as about organized crime in a nation that has long boasted a relatively crime-free record.
Tetsuya Shiroo, 60, who police say is a senior member of Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s largest organized crime syndicate, was arrested on the scene.
CAR PROBLEMS
He told police he was angry at the city for refusing to compensate him after his car was damaged at a public works construction site.
The assassination was all the more tragic as the second attack in 20 years against the mayor of the southwestern city whose politicians historically have been outspoken pacifists.
In 1990, then-mayor Hitoshi Motoshima was shot and seriously wounded after saying that Japan’s emperor bore some responsibility for World War II, enraging rightist-leaning nationalists. A right-wing terrorist was arrested in that attack.
GANGS
Known as yakuza, gangsters are often involved in construction businesses, corporate extortion, gambling, the sex trade and drug trafficking.
According to the latest police report, gang members in Japan number about 84,200. They are behind two-thirds of Japan’s reported shootings, but shootings are still rare compared to the US and other nations at only 65 a year.
Ito had been born in Nagasaki on Aug. 23, 1945, just two weeks after the US atomic bombing of Nagasaki toward the end of World War II. The other city to suffer atomic bombing was nearby Hiroshima.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS