Japan: So-called “Twitter killer” executed – first execution of a death sentence since 2022

Japan executed a man on Friday who was known as the “Twitter killer” and murdered and dismembered nine people he had met online. It was the first execution in Japan since 2022.

34-year-old Takahiro Shiraishi was hanged for the murder of his young victims, all but one of whom were women, after contacting them via the social media platform now known as X.

He had targeted users who had posted about suicidal thoughts and offered to help them with their plans or even die with them.

Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki said Shiraishi’s crimes, which he committed in 2017, included “robbery, rape, murder … corpse damage and corpse escape”.

Japan and the United States are the only two G7 countries that still use the death penalty, and the practice is overwhelmingly supported by the Japanese population.

His lawyers had argued that Shiraishi should receive a prison sentence and not be executed because his victims had expressed suicidal thoughts and thus consented to death.

Executions are always carried out by hanging in Japan, where around 100 prisoners sentenced to death await execution. Most inmates are kept in solitary confinement for years, sometimes even decades.

There is widespread criticism of the system and the government’s lack of transparency regarding this practice. In 2022, Tomohiro Kato was executed for an attack that killed seven people in 2008 when he drove a rented two-ton truck into a crowd in Tokyo’s Akihabara district, got out and stabbed himself with a knife.

The execution of serial killer Shiraishi Takahiro on June 27, 2025 was the first execution in Japan in almost three years.

Sources:
https://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com/2025/06/japan-executes-twitter-killer-who.html
https://sumikai.com/nachrichten-aus-japan/eu-fordert-aussetzung-der-todesstrafe-in-japan-358786/