JAPAN: OPPOSITION LAWMAKER KOKI ISHII HAS BEEN STABBED TO DEATH IN WHAT COULD BE FIRST POLITICAL ASSASSINATION IN MORE THAN FORTY YEARS

Record ID: 628198

  • Title: JAPAN: OPPOSITION LAWMAKER KOKI ISHII HAS BEEN STABBED TO DEATH IN WHAT COULD BE FIRST POLITICAL ASSASSINATION IN MORE THAN FORTY YEARS
  • Date: 26th October 2002
  • Summary: (W3) TOKYO, JAPAN (OCTOBER 22, 2002) (REUTERS) MV CAMERAMEN FILMING INVESTIGATION; SLV POLICE INVESTIGATING ISHII'S LIMOUSINE; SLV MEDIA (5 SHOTS) (SOUNDBITE) (Japanese) NEIGHBOUR SAYING "I came here to visit him (Ishii) because I heard he was injured. But I'm so disappointed that I have just heard he passed away." SLV POLICE CAR TRYING TO GET TO ISHII'S HOUSE; SLV POLICE (2 SHOTS) (SOUNDBITE) (Japanese) NEIGHBOUR SAYING "I think he (Ishii) was killed because he was a politician. I will be all right because I'm from ordinary family. But it's scary." SLV POLICE WALKING; SLV POLICE CHECKING AREA (2 SHOTS) SLV EXTERIOR OF OF ISHII'S OFFICE; LAS POSTER OF ISHII (2 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 10th November 2002 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: TOKYO, JAPAN
  • Country: Japan
  • Topics: Crime / Law Enforcement,Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA3PHF0PAMJKAW5VE8KAYZTNNIK
  • Story Text: A Japanese opposition lawmaker known for his aggressive probing into ruling party scandals has being stabbed to death in what could be Japan's first political assassination in more than four decades.
    Police said Democratic Party politician Koki Ishii, 61, was attacked in front of his home in central Tokyo on Friday (October 25, 2002) by an unidentified man in his 50s who ran away.
    With the perpetrator still on the run, the motive for the crime was unclear.
    But it was a rare case of deadly violence against a politician in a land that saw its last political assassination of a lawmaker in 1960 when a Socialist leader was killed by a right-wing youth.
    Media reports said Ishii had been about to step into his car when a man wearing a red bandana approached and stabbed him, apparently with a sashimi knife, without saying anything.
    The reports said the man had been seen outside Ishii's home in the upmarket Setagaya neighbourhood for about two hours before the killing.
    "I came here to visit him (Ishii) because I heard he was injured. But I'm so disappointed that I have just heard he passed away," said an senior man who lives very close to Ishii's house.
    "I think Ishii-san was killed because he was a politician,"
    said an elderly woman on the street near his home.
    "I will be all right because I'm from ordinary family. but it's scary."
    The area near Ishii's house was swarming with police and crime scene investigators after the stabbing, which shocked politicians and local residents alike.
    Public Safety Commission Chairman Sadakazu Tanigaki, the cabinet minister in charge of the national police force, told reporters: "This is a huge threat to being able to go about one's business safely. We must make every effort to deal with it."
    Ishii was known for his efforts to expose corruption and was was head of an "anti-corruption task force" inside the Democratic Party, known as the "G-Man Squad", a reference to a slang term for Prohibition-era gang-busting FBI agents in the United States.
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