(ANSA) - TOKYO, JULY 26 - A 39-year-old Japanese man sentenced to death for killing seven people in June 2008 in the streets of Akihabara, the Tokyo electronics district, was executed.
Local media, including the public broadcaster NHK, reported this today.
Tomohiro Kato had driven a truck into passersby in the middle of the day, before getting out of the vehicle and stabbing people randomly in the crowd with a double-edged sword, killing seven and wounding ten.
His death sentence was confirmed by the Court of Appeal in September 2012, after a first instance verdict in March 2011. The Japanese Supre Court rejected Kato's appeal in 2015, making it final.
At the time a precarious worker in an auto parts manufacturing plant in a small town in central Japan, the man shortly before the massacre learned that his contract would expire at the end of June 2008.
Hosted by his employer, he confided in internet who feared becoming homeless.
During an audition, Kato had also explained that he had committed lastrage due to the criticism he had been subjected to on the web.
After the massacre, Japanese authorities banned the possession of double-edged daggers with blades longer than 5.5cm.
It is the first application of the death penalty in Japan since last December, when three people convicted of murder were executed by hanging.
Japan is, together with the United States, one of the last industrialized and democratic countries to still use the death penalty, widely supported by Japanese public opinion.
(HANDLE).