Three convicted killers were hanged in Japan early yesterday, arousing furious protests from Amnesty International and activists opposed to capital punishment.
"We have today executed three persons whose death sentences had been confirmed," the Justice Ministry said in a one-line statement which, as is customary, omitted the convicts' names and details of where they were hanged.
An Amnesty International campaigner, Mr Akira Ishikawa, accused the government of timing the hangings to take place just a day before the end of the Diet session. "Their political motives are very clear. With a December cabinet reshuffle looming, the ministry tried to avoid creating a minister with no execution record," he said.
The Justice Minister, Mr Okiharu Yasuoka, who had not sent anyone to the gallows since being appointed in July, is expected be replaced shortly along with other members of the cabinet of the Prime Minister, Mr Yoshiro Mori.
"These were last-minute executions. It is stunning that they dare take away people's lives only at their convenience," the Amnesty campaigner said.
In Japan, inmates often spend years on death row before being executed without warning to themselves or their families.
At least another 52 people are on death row in Japan, said Mr Yoshihiro Yasuda, an activist from the Capital Punishment Abolition Forum. He identified the three executed yesterday as Kiyotaka Fujiwara, Takashi Miyawaki and Kunikatsu Oishi.
Miyawaki and serial killer Fujiwara were both hanged at a prison in the central Japanese city of Nagoya, while Oishi was put to death in Fukuoka, southern Japan, the activist said.
Two members of the opposition Social Democratic Party, Mr Nobuto Hosaka and Mr Reiko Oshima, who are opposed to capital punishment, had earlier appealed for clemency to the Justice Ministry, Mr Yasuda said.
The executions were the first under Mr Mori's seven-month-old administration, and the first since two prisoners were hanged on December 17th last year.
In a government poll of 5,000 adults released in November last year, 80 per cent of Japanese surveyed said they supported capital punishment. It was the highest level of support since the government started to take polls on the death penalty in 1956. Only 8.8 per cent said the death penalty should be abolished.
Officials attributed the support to a series of serious crimes in recent years, such as the nerve gas attack on the Tokyo metro by the Aum Supreme Truth cult in March 1995, which killed 12 people and injured thousands more.