Japan: Man sentenced to death for 2016 stabbing rampage

By Riyaz ul Khaliq

ANKARA (AA) - Japan on Monday sentenced a man to death for a stabbing rampage in 2016 which resulted in the death of 19 people with disabilities at a care center, local media reported.

Presiding Judge Kiyoshi Aonuma in a Yokohmama provincial court handed down a sentence to Satoshi Uematsu, 30, saying: "The grave consequence was incomparable to other incidents with 19 lives being taken.”

The incident had happened on July 26, 2016 at the care facility for mentally disabled people in Kanagawa province, south of the capital Tokyo.

Uematsu had admitted to the killing and insisted that “people with disabilities who are unable to communicate well have no human rights,” according to the news agency.

He, however, had said he would accept the court’s ruling and would not appeal against it.

Japanese prosecutors had demanded death penalty for the accused. However, defense lawyers pleaded that Uematsu was “mentally incompetent”.

The accused, his lawyers told the court, was addicted to marijuana which “changed his personality since 2015”.