Japan Opens Execution Chambers to Local Media for First Time Next Week

Japan will open its death chambers to local media for the first time next week, a month after two inmates were executed with the justice minister in attendance.

The media may only get a “sanitized” view of the Tokyo Detention Center, where hangings take place, Nobuto Hosaka, a former lawmaker and former secretary general of the Diet’s League for the Abolition of the Death Penalty, said in a press conference in Tokyo today.

Foreign media and freelance journalists may be denied access, he said.

“Disclosing the facility is not going to lead to a great debate in Japan” about capital punishment, he said.

Hosaka had visited the execution chambers at the Tokyo Detention Center in 2003 and 2007 with fellow Diet members.

On July 28, Minister of Justice Keiko Chiba announced the execution of Kazuo Shinozawa, 59, who murdered six people in a jewelry store heist, and Hidenori Ogata, 33, convicted of killing a man and a woman.

The executions were the first in Japan in a year, and more than 100 inmates are on death row.

Source: Blomberg, August 20, 2010

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