CHINESE MAN GETS SUSPENDED DEATH SENTENCE FOR MURDERING JAPANESE

a court in Shenyang, northeastern China, sentenced 27-year-old Chinese national Zhou Bo to death for killing Japanese national Masahiko Sato in Fukuoka, south-western Japan, in May 2005. The sentence was suspended for two years. The sentence indicates Zhou will probably not be executed. Suspended death sentences are often commuted to prison terms after the suspension period ends.
Sato, a 44-year-old businessman at that time, was stabbed to death at a beauty clinic that Zhou had entered to rob. Zhou later returned to China but was arrested by local authorities in March 2006.
In November, Sato's father Yasuhiko, 71, sent a request to the judge for the trial at Shenyang Intermediate People's Court, saying he did not want Zhou to be put to death.
"I will not feel better even if the defendant is given capital punishment. I don't want the defendant's family to experience the same feeling (of loss) as I have," he earlier told Kyodo News.