JAPAN. PROSECUTORS DEMAND DEATH PENALTY FOR PERUVIAN MURDERER
Japanese prosecutors demanded the death penalty for Jose Manuel Torres Yagi, a Peruvian charged with killing a seven-year-old girl.
Japanese prosecutors demanded the death penalty for Jose Manuel Torres Yagi, a Peruvian charged with killing a seven-year-old girl.
During the trial at the Hiroshima District Court, Yagi admitted to strangling the girl and dumping her body in a cardboard box near his apartment in the western Japanese city in November 2005.
The 34-year-old Peruvian said the killing was not intentional and pleaded for forgiveness. "The devil came into my body and moved my body. When I realized, there was a dead girl," he said.
But prosecutors told the court: "The crime was well planned and extremely vicious. The impact on society was extremely large. There is no choice but an extreme punishment." The suspect came to Japan in 2004 on a passport which allegedly bore a false name, taking advantage of preferential treatment for immigrants of Japanese origin.
The case led Japan, which already had some of the world's strictest immigration restrictions, to tighten the screening of applicants claiming Japanese ancestry.
Prosecutors said Yagi planned to sexually abuse the girl and killed her by choking her neck for several minutes.
During the trial at the Hiroshima District Court, Yagi admitted to strangling the girl and dumping her body in a cardboard box near his apartment in the western Japanese city in November 2005.
The 34-year-old Peruvian said the killing was not intentional and pleaded for forgiveness. "The devil came into my body and moved my body. When I realized, there was a dead girl," he said.
But prosecutors told the court: "The crime was well planned and extremely vicious. The impact on society was extremely large. There is no choice but an extreme punishment." The suspect came to Japan in 2004 on a passport which allegedly bore a false name, taking advantage of preferential treatment for immigrants of Japanese origin.
The case led Japan, which already had some of the world's strictest immigration restrictions, to tighten the screening of applicants claiming Japanese ancestry.
Prosecutors said Yagi planned to sexually abuse the girl and killed her by choking her neck for several minutes.
— SOURCES
- (Sources: Agence France Presse, 09/06/2006)