Japan executes two men for 1988 murders

The two men, aged 60 and 67, had been convicted of the murder of the president and an employee of an investment advisory company in 1988. They kidnapped their victims to extort money from them before strangling them to death.

Afterwards they encased the bodies in concrete and buried them in a mountainous area.

Japan last carried out executions in July, when all 13 Aum Shinrikyo cult members convicted over the 1995 poison gas attack on the Tokyo subway, in which 13 people died, were put to death.

Along with the United States, Japan is one of the few major industrialised countries to administer capital punishment.

Human rights groups have criticised Japanese policy surrounding the death penalty and the conditions under which death row prisoners are kept.

Convicts who have been sentenced to death often spend years in solitary confinement.

Foreign governments have also singled out the fact that prisoners are not informed in advance of the date of their execution as particularly cruel.

Thursday's death sentences mean that a total of 36 people have been executed since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe came to power in December 2012. Local media reports that there are another 109 prisoners on death row.

In 2016, the Japan Federation of Bar Associations issued a declaration urging the government to abolish capital punishment and introduce life sentences without parole by 2020, when the country hosts the UN Congress on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice.

Australian Associated Press