Execution tape to be aired

A Japanese radio station will broadcast a 1955 tape of an execution in a special program next month, a rare move to raise public awareness as the government increases the frequency at which it hangs death row inmates.

The tape, from a prison in Osaka, western Japan, includes voices from the condemned prisoner and a prison guard, and the sound of the rope stretching when the inmate was hanged, said Katsuhiko Shimizu at Nippon Cultural Broadcasting Inc, a private radio station.

(China Daily 04/17/2008 page11)