JAPAN: MURDERER CONVICT EXECUTED, GOVERNMENT ABE’S TWELFTH EXECUTION

Japan executed a man who robbed and killed a woman after plotting the crime with accomplices he met online.
The execution brings to 12 the total number of death sentences carried out since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took power in 2012.
Tsukasa Kanda, 44, was hanged for killing 31-year-old Rie Isogai in Nagoya in 2007.
He met his two accomplices via a mobile phone-based web service and the three of them together devised a plan to target a random woman victim.
The men kidnapped Isogai from a Nagoya street and suffocated her by wrapping her head and neck with a plastic bag, adhesive tape and rope, before battering her head with a hammer, according to Justice Ministry records.
Kanda's accomplices are serving life sentences. Kanda did not appeal his death sentence after the original district court ruling.