Yasumasa Shibuya has been sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a nine-year-old Vietnamese girl in Japan last year.
According to the Japan Times, Le Thi Nhat Linh, who at the time was in third grade at a school in Chiba Prefecture, on the eastern edge of Tokyo, went missing on March 24, 2017. Two days later, her body was found near a drainage ditch in the town of Abiko.
Shibuya, the former head of a parents' group at Linh's elementary school, was arrested and subsequently indicted on suspicions that he had abducted and sexually assaulted the girl before strangling her to death and dumping her body.
The accused has denied the crime, but prosecutors said that Shibuya's DNA was found on Linh's body, while blood and saliva matching her DNA was found inside the man's car, the news source shares. Linh's father, Le Anh Hao, has previously called for Shibuya to face the death penalty.
In January, VnExpress reported on the plight of Linh's family, who were gathering signatures in both Japan and Vietnam asking prosecutors to bring Shibuya to trial.
After his daughter's death, Hao did not return to work. Instead, he spent his days visiting train stations across Japan in order to collect signatures from members of the public.
Previously, prosecutors in the case had sought the death penalty. The Asahi Shimbun reported in June that they were calling for the punishment given Shibuya's "extraordinarily cruel and cold-blooded criminal act."
The death penalty is rare in Japan, though on the same day that Shibuya's sentence was announced, seven members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult responsible for the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin gas attacks were hanged.
[Photo via Asahi Shimbun]
