Former care worker in Japan executed for mass killing

By Associated Press reporter

A Japanese court has sentenced a former care home employee to hang for stabbing to death 19 disabled people and injuring two dozen others in the deadliest mass attack in post-Second World War Japan.

The Yokohama District Court convicted Satoshi Uematsu of the killings and of injuring 24 other residents and two care-givers at the Yamayuri-en residential centre in July 2016.

During the investigation and trial, Uematsu repeatedly said he had no regrets and was trying to help the world by killing people he thought were burdens. Advocacy groups said the suspect’s views reflected a persistent prejudice in Japan against people with disabilities.

The trial focused on his mental state at the time of the crime. Chief Judge Kiyoshi Aonuma dismissed defence requests to acquit him because he was mentally incompetent due to a marijuana overdose.

“The attacks were premeditated, and the defendant was acting consistently to achieve his goal,” Judge Aonuma said, according to NHK public television.

“The crime, which took the lives of 19 people, was extremely heinous and caused damage that is incomparable to any other case,” he was quoted by Kyodo News as saying.

Prosecutors said Uematsu’s motive came from his biases and work experience at the home and not from the use of marijuana. They said Uematsu was mentally competent and should take responsibility for his actions.

The killings mirrored a plot described in a letter that Uematsu had tried to give to a parliamentary leader months prior to the attack. He quit his job at the Yamayuri-en facility after being confronted about the letter and was committed to psychiatric care, but was released within two weeks, officials have said.

Uematsu, 30, told medical staff and officials that he was influenced by the ideas of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, whose killings of disabled people were seen as intended to improve the perceived master race.

Executions are carried out in secrecy in Japan, where prisoners are not informed of their fate until the morning they are hanged. Since 2007, Japan has begun releasing the names of those executed and some details of their crimes, but disclosures are still limited.