Canada to extradite Chinese man to Japan in 1995 triple murder probe

TOKYO, NOV. 03, 2013: The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department said Sunday that a Chinese man, who lives in Canada, will be extradited to Japan to be questioned about a triple murder in Tokyo’s Hachioji in 1995.

The 43-year-old man is wanted in Japan for using a forged passport to leave the country in 2002. He obtained Canadian citizenship in 2006.

A police spokesman said that a Canadian appeals court had finalized the extradition request that was approved in September this year, upholding a lower court decision, Fuji TV reported. The police will send investigators to Canada this month to escort the suspect back to Japan.

Japan’s National Police Agency first filed an extradition request with Canadian authorities in 2010 with the Ontario High Court. However, the suspect filed an appeal, claiming that he should not be extradited over a passport violation if the objective is to question him about a murder case. 

The NPA has offered a 3 million yen reward for information leading to the arrest of the person or persons responsible for the murders of three women workers at a supermarket in Hachioji on July 30, 1995.

The three women, two of whom were 17-year-old students working part-time, were shot to death during a robbery at the supermarket. The killer got away without stealing money and jewellery from the victims or the locked safe in the office, a fact which has puzzled police and given rise to speculation that the shooting was motivated by a personal grudge.

Police were unable to achieve a breakthrough in the case until 2009, when a Japanese man on death row in China for drug trafficking made a statement to Japanese police that a Chinese man in Canada was involved in the murder.

The Japanese man, who was executed in 2010, told Japanese investigators that the suspect in Canada was part of a gang of Japanese and Chinese who carried out a series of robberies in Japan in the 1990s. 

Courtesy: Japan Today