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EU regrets Japanese hangings, but supports review

29 July 2010, 10:10 CET
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(BRUSSELS) - EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton on Wednesday expressed "deep regret" after two Japanese convicts were hanged but welcomed a decision to review the death penalty.

"I deeply regret the execution by hanging of Hidenori Ogata and Kazuo Shinozawa on 28 July 2010, and the fact that this marks the resumption of executions in Japan after one year during which none took place," Ashton said in a statement.

"The European Union is opposed to the use of capital punishment in all cases and under all circumstances and has consistently called for its universal abolition," she said.

Japan's justice minister Keiko Chiba, a foe of capital punishment, announced a review of the death penalty Wednesday after personally witnessing the executions.

"I confirmed the executions with my own eyes," said Chiba. "It made me again think deeply about the death penalty, and I once again strongly felt that there is a need for a fundamental discussion about the death penalty."

Ashton said she welcomed "the latest efforts by the minister of justice to foster public debate in Japan about the death penalty and her decision to set up a panel to study the issue."

The two male convicts hanged were Kazuo Shinozawa, 59, who killed six people by setting fire to a jewellery store, and Hidenori Ogata, 33, convicted of killing a man and a woman and seriously injuring two others.

Japan is the only industrialised democracy, apart from the United States, to carry out capital punishment -- usually for multiple homicides.

The country last executed prisoners exactly a year earlier, when the conservative Liberal Democratic Party still ruled the country, putting to death three inmates including one Chinese national, also for multiple murder.

When the centre-left Democratic Party of Japan took power last September, ending more than half a century of conservative rule, it said it favoured public discussion on the death penalty.


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