The next time death penalty opponents tell you that the United States is “the only civilized nation with the death penalty,” go ahead and laugh in their faces.
The next time death penalty opponents tell you that the United States is “the only civilized nation with the death penalty,” go ahead and laugh in their faces. Japan, whatever faults it may have or have had historically, is a highly civilized place, with a miniscule crime rate and standards of public order that even the Swiss can envy. And boy do they ever have a death penalty!
In the early hours of the morning today, seven members of the Aum Shinri Kyo religious cult that carried out a horrific sarin gas attack on the Toyo subway in 1995, killing 13 innocents and sending thousands to hospitals, were executed by hanging. The cult had stockpiled horrific weapons to provoke a doomsday vision, and killed a total of 27 people before it was broken up.
The leader of the cult, Shoko Asahara (real name: Chizuo Matsumoto) and six of his accomplices spent two decades in prison, while appeals and other legal niceties were fought in court, and finally resolved in January this year. Another six members of the cult are in prison awaiting execution.
Aum Shinro Kyo coat of arms (Wikimedia Commons)
Amnesty International is horrified that Japan executes prisoners in the fashion that it does.
