Japan executes three death-row inmates

TOKYO — The Justice Ministry said Thursday that a child killer and two other convicted murderers were hanged, its first executions since a conservative government swept to power in landslide elections in December. Kaoru Kobayashi, 44, killed a seven-year-old girl and sent a photograph of the dead body to her mother in 2004, while Masahiro Kanagawa, 29, killed one man and injured seven other people in a knifing spree outside a shopping mall in a Tokyo suburb in 2008. He also murdered another man in a separate incident the same year. The third was Keiki Muto, 62, who strangled a bar owner for money in 2002.

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