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NAGASAKI, Japan: Stunned Japanese placed flowers at the spot here
where the mayor of Nagasaki was gunned down as police probed the
killer’s links to the nation’s largest crime syndicate.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe branded the slaying as
a challenge to democracy, and authorities pledged to tighten
security around political leaders ahead of local polls Sunday in
which the mayor was campaigning for reelection.
The mayor, 61-year-old Iccho Ito, died early
Wednesday due to massive blood loss, hours after being shot outside
his campaign offices in Nagasaki, a city forever linked to the
August 9, 1945 atomic bomb that devastated it.
Police immediately arrested a gunman who is said
to be connected to Japan’s largest underworld syndicate, the
Yamaguchi-gumi.
“This is not an act by a human being. If he
had grievances, he should have said them to the mayor instead of
shooting him,” said Yoshinori Hirano, 57, a worker for a gas
company who was near the site of the shooting.
“To see an ordinary citizen—an important
person—get killed violently is very shocking because Nagasaki is
the city of peace,” he said as he started to weep in public.
Ito, a political independent, was an outspoken
pacifist born a month after the atomic bomb, which helped bring
World War II to an end.
Nagasaki is to press ahead with its mayoral
race, accepting new candidates until Thursday.
“This criminal act during the election
campaign is a challenge to democracy. It cannot be forgiven no
matter what,” Abe told reporters in Tokyo.
Police said the assailant, 59-year-old Tetsuya
Shiroo, who was taken into custody immediately after the incident,
“fired several bullets at the back of the victim with an intent to
kill him.”
They said he was an executive member of a local
group affiliated with the Yamaguchi-gumi syndicate.
Shiroo had grievances with the city after his
vehicle fell into a hole and was damaged at a construction site four
years ago, police said.
But officials said they were questioning Shiroo
to see if there were other motives too.
“An official who dealt with Shiroo’s
complaint at the time said it was unlikely that the accident was the
real motive for his act,” a city spokesman said.
Media reports said Shiroo had had a dispute with
the city over bidding for public works and had attempted to
blackmail a previous mayor seeking money.
TV Asahi said Shiroo demanded up to 2.7 million
yen ($22,500) over the traffic accident but was turned down.
Japanese gangs, known as “yakuza,” have
interests in underworld businesses such as showbusiness and
prostitution and are also known to engage in kickback schemes for
construction projects.
Yamaguchi-gumi, headquar-tered in the western
city of Kobe, has about 40,000 members and accounted for some 50
percent of Japan’s underworld, according to the National Police
Agency.
--AFP
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