Japan mass killer found fit for trial

Man to be tried for killing 19 disabled patients

Tokyo: A man will stand trial over the brutal stabbing deaths of 19 people at a disability centre in Japan last year – the nation’s bloodiest crime in decades – media reported.

Satoshi Uematsu claimed he was on a selfstyled mission to rid the world of people with mental illness when he allegedly carried out the attack at the Tsukui Yamayuri-en care centre south of Tokyo on July 26.

The mass killing at the facility in mountainous Sagamihara city in Kanagawa prefecture shocked Japan and sparked a review of the country’s mental health system.

The Yokohama District Public Prosecutors Office indicted Uematsu for killing 19 residents and attempting to kill or injure 24 others at the centre, according to public broadcaster NHK and other media.

Uematsu, who once worked at the facility, had previously been under psychiatric care and had made public threats against the centre.

The 27-year-old experienced a “personality disorder” but psychological reviews have suggested he is fit for trial, media including Jiji Press said yesterday.

The prosecutors’ office declined to immediately comment when reached by the press.

Uematsu allegedly broke into the centre, tied up caregivers and roamed the facility stabbing sleeping residents and leaving them in pools of blood, authorities have said.

Shortly afterwards Uematsu turned himself in to local police and confessed, investigators have said.

Uematsu was forcibly hospitalised in February 2016 after telling colleagues at the care centre that he intended to kill disabled people.

He had previously delivered a letter to the speaker of the lower house of Japan’s parliament in which he outlined a plan for nighttime attacks against Tsukui Yamayuri-en and another facility.

He presented a vision of a society in which the seriously handicapped could be euthanised with the approval of family members. — AFP