Legal Commentary

China Executes Japanese Drug Smuggler, Three More to Come

By Jeralyn

Mitsunobu Akano, age 65, of Japan was caught with 1.5 kilos of meth in China. He was executed yesterday. Under Chinese law, offenses involving more than 50 grams of heroin or meth carry the death penalty.

When caught, Akano was attempting to bring the drugs from China to Japan. China plans to execute three more Japanese citizens this week:

Beijing told Japan last week that it plans to execute three more Japanese drug smugglers this week - Teruo Takeda, 67, from Nagoya city; Hironori Ukai, 48, from Gifu prefecture; and Katsuo Mori, 67, of Fukushima prefecture.

Why are the Japanese going to China to get meth? One has to assume Chinese law enforcement forced the Japanese to give up their sources before killing them. Did China track down the meth producers and kill them too? Probably. (Unless they caught the producers first, who then ratted out their Japanese purchasers.) There's really no way to know. [More...]

China says it imposes its death penalty without regard to national origin. It just doesn't like to talk about it. China won't disclose how many people it executes -- they say it's a "state secret." Amnesty International's 2009 report on the death penalty found 714 executions in 18 countries. But it believes China's number alone could be in the thousands. Barbarism.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on April 06, 2010 (boomark / email).