Japan on Thursday executed a 40-year-old Chinese man convicted of murdering a family of four, the justice ministry said.
Justice Minister Masako Mori announced the execution of Wei Wei, 40, a former student at a Japanese-language school, who had been given the death sentence in relation to the murder of a family of four in Fukuoka Prefecture in June 2003. The execution marked the third in Japan this year and the first since August, The Japan Times reported.
Wei had committed the murders with two other accomplices who were also Chinese nationals. The other two reportedly fled to China and were arrested there. One was executed in China in 2005 and the other received a life sentence, according to media reports.
The latest execution has brought the number of executions under the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who returned to power in 2012, to 39.
Japan is one of just two Group of Seven nations to retain the death penalty - along with the United States.
The Japan Federation of Bar Associations has called for the abolishment of the death penalty by 2020, pointing to cases in which people on death row were later found innocent after a retrial. It has also questioned the validity of hanging those who are petitioning for retrials.
But the public is overwhelmingly in favour of keeping capital punishment. A poll conducted by the government in 2014 found that around 80 per cent of the 1,826 respondents said that there were compelling reasons to keep the death penalty, whereas 10 per cent thought the death penalty should be abolished.