TOKYO — A Japanese man drove a minivan directly into a crowd of pedestrians out for New Year’s celebrations just after midnight Tuesday morning, injuring eight people, in what he said was retaliation for the “death penalty.”
Police spokesman Satoshi Mishima said a 21-year-old man had been arrested, but said police were still investigating the precise motives behind the attack.
“I hit them with an intention to kill,” Mishima said the man had told police. “I did that to retaliate against the death penalty.”
Some media reports said the man had linked the attack to the executions in July of 13 members of the Aum Shinrikyo or Aum Supreme Truth cult, who were responsible for a 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway.
But police said they were still investigating whether the man was actually connected to the doomsday cult.
NHK World said he was driving a rental van registered in Osaka, the western city where two other executions were carried out last month over a 1988 robbery and murder case.
The crash occurred on Takeshita Street, a popular street for tourists and trendy young Japanese people in the fashionable Harajuku neighborhood.
Japan’s NHK World said the street, which had been closed to traffic, was packed with people paying a New Year’s visit to the Meiji Shrine, which is supposed to bring good luck.
It showed footage of a small van whose front was completely smashed in.
Police said one teenage boy had been taken to the hospital after the attack, where he is undergoing an operation.
The suspect was also carrying kerosene in his car, police said. Media reports added that he had initially planned to spread the kerosene around to start a fire, but had been unable to do so because of security restrictions.
After the crash, the suspect fled the scene but was later arrested.
Shoko Asahara, the leader of the Aum Shinrikyo, was the first of 13 cult members to be hanged last July for the subway attack that killed 13 people and poisoned more than 6,000 others.
The two executions in Osaka brought the total for the year to 15, the highest total since 2008. Japan and the United States are the only two major developed countries that still employ the death penalty, with public opinion here generally supportive of its use.
Another 109 other people remain on death row.
Source: washingtonpost.com, Simon Denyer and Akiko Kashiwagi, January 1, 2019
8 injured as man rams car into pedestrians in Harajuku in 'retaliation for execution'
TOKYO - Eight people were injured after a man rammed his car into pedestrians on a shopping street in central Tokyo in the early hours of Tuesday, police said.
The police arrested Kazuhiro Kusakabe, 21, on suspicion of attempted murder. A 19-year-old university student remains unconscious after being hit by the minicar shortly after midnight on Takeshita Street in the Harajuku district, which is normally packed with young shoppers and foreign tourists during daytime.
The street was closed to vehicular traffic at the time as it was expected to be crowded with people, including those making New Year's visits to the nearby Meiji Shrine, one of the biggest Shinto shrines in Japan.
Kusakabe told the police he had intended to kill the pedestrians he hit "in retaliation for an execution." It was not immediately clear whether he was referring to a specific execution or the country's system of capital punishment.
Investigative sources quoted Kusakabe as saying at first he had perpetrated an act of terrorism.
He drove the wrong way on the one-way street and hit eight men aged between 19 and 51 while traveling around 140 meters, the police said. The vehicle stopped after crashing into a building.
Another 19-year-old man was slightly injured after Kusakabe allegedly struck him after getting out of the car, the police said. The suspect fled the scene but the police found him in a nearby park about half an hour later.
The police also found a 20-liter tanks of kerosene in the car, which Kusakabe said he planned to use to burn the vehicle, according to the police.
He also told the police he had driven the rental car from Osaka Prefecture and intended to enter Meiji Shrine but was unable to do so because of traffic control.
Meanwhile, about 120,000 revelers packed into Shibuya's famous scramble crossing but activities were tightly controlled by police and riot police. No major trouble had been reported as of 5 a.m. and most people had dispersed by then.
Source: Japan Today, January 1, 2019
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde