JAPAN. TOP COURT UPHOLDS DEATH PENALTY ON MAN FOR SLAYING 2 GIRLS IN 1992

Japan's Supreme Court upheld the death penalty given to a man for abducting and murdering two 7-year-old girls in Fukuoka Prefecture in 1992. The top court's five-justice second petty bench rejected an appeal from Michitoshi Kuma, 68, who had claimed innocence since his arrest.
''There is no room to show leniency for the defendant,'' the presiding judge said, terming the crime ''cruel and hard-boiled'' that was ''motivated from his sexual desire.''
According to the lower court decisions, Kuma abducted the two elementary school girls while they were on their way to school on February 20, 1992, in Iizuka, Fukuoka Prefecture, inviting them into his station wagon. He strangled the girls in the car and dumped their bodies in a mountainous area 25 kilometres to the south, the rulings said. Fukuoka police arrested Kuma in September 1994, two years and seven months after the girls' bodies were found. The Fukuoka District Court found Kuma guilty and sentenced him to death in September 1999, a decision the Fukuoka High Court upheld in October 2001.