Japan on Thursday executed a Chinese man for the 2003 brutal murder of a family of four

The man, Wei Wei, carried the heinous act in the city of Fukuoka, with two accomplices and his hanging was Japanese authorities’ execution of a foreigner in 10 years.

The condemned man, a former language student aged 40, had admitted carrying out the murders but denied playing the leading role.

He and his accomplices had robbed the home of businessman Shinjiro Matsumoto and wiped out the entire family.

Mr. Matsumoto was strangled, his two children strangled or smothered and his wife drowned in the bath.

The two accomplices later fled to China, where one was executed in 2005 and the other sentenced to life imprisonment.

Japan has more than 100 prisoners on death row.

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In the South-East nation, death row inmates are not told of their impending execution until the day it is carried out.

The authorities only started to disclose the names of executed inmates in 2007.

Between then and the latest execution only one foreigner had been named – a Chinese man hanged in 2009.

15 were executed last year, including 13 members of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult.

Justice Minister Masako Mori said she signed off Wei Wei’s execution “after careful consideration.”

She said: “It is an extremely cruel and brutal case in which the happily living family members, including an eight-year-old and 11-year-old, were all murdered because of truly selfish reasons.” (BBC)

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