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WORLD> Asia-Pacific
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Japan PM denounces murder of bureaucrat
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-11-24 10:38 LIMA -- Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso on Sunday denounced the murder of a former top pensions bureaucrat that stunned the country, vowing not to give in to violence.
Japan, which has one of the world's lowest crime rates, was shocked after the stabbed bodies of a 61-year-old former vice health minister and his wife were discovered at their home near Tokyo. Japanese police said Sunday they arrested a man who turned himself in and admitted to the murder. The former minister was involved in a division that bungled millions of pension payments, causing national outrage, although the suspect reportedly said he had a grudge over the death of his pet at a health center. "Trying to resolve differences in opinion through murder must never be acceptable," Aso told a news conference in Peru, where he was attending an Asia-Pacific summit. "I will have (investigators) speed up a full accounting of the case," Aso said. "I would like to say again that I will never give in to violence at any cost." Suspect Takeshi Koizumi, 46, was arrested on suspicion of violating a law banning the possession of knives without permission. He has not been arrested for the murders. He reportedly also admitted to stabbing and seriously wounding the wife of another 76-year-old former vice welfare minister on her doorstep on the same day, pretending to be from a parcel delivery service. "I never dreamed my child might do this kind of thing," the suspect's father said in footage aired in Japanese media. The father said he received a telephone call from his son Saturday, hours before Koizumi turned himself in to police, after a decade without contact. "He told me that he sent me a letter. As he didn't sound strange and was actually speaking cheerfully, I thought he may have got a wife," the father said. |
