By The Associated Press The 26-year-old man accused of carrying out a mass stabbing Tuesday at a Japanese facility for the mentally disabled that left 19 people dead had written a letter in. But police have not disclosed the names of the victims on grounds that their relatives do not wish to have them identified due to their disabilities.
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He was quoted by police as saying he had attacked those who were unable to communicate their feelings, broadcaster NHK reported.
With a blue jacket draped over his head, Satoshi Uematsu was escorted out of a police station into a waiting van before a crowd of flashing news cameras.
Uematsu had been held at the police station all day and overnight after turning himself in about two hours after Tuesday’s pre-dawn attack.
Video footage showed him smirking in the back seat of a police auto as it drove away. Uematsu delivered a letter detailing his plan to kill the disabled before he was sacked from the facility earlier this year, although no action was taken against what the letter threatened.
Once again, the anti-gun movement has been discredited, this time with a mass killing using a knife in Japan.
According to the police, 26 people were also wounded, three of them seriously, in the rampage at the Tsukui Yamayuri En (Tsukui Lily Garden). Kanagawa welfare division official Tatsuhisa Hirosue said many details were not clear.
The cult, Aum Shinrikyo, was responsible for another sarin gas attack the previous year that killed seven people and sickened some 200 more.
“My goal is a world in which the severely disabled can be euthanized, with their guardians’ consent, if they are unable to live at home and be active in society”, Uematsu wrote, apparently trying to explain his goal.
Uematsu boasted in the letter that he had the ability to kill 470 disabled people in what he called was “a revolution”, and outlined an attack on two facilities, after which he said he will turn himself in.
“My reasoning is that I may be able to revitalize the world economy and I thought it may be possible to prevent World War III”.
Identifying the facility as one of his targets, Uematsu said, “My goal is creating a world in which euthanasia can be given to people with multiple disabilities – in cases where it is extremely hard for them to live at home and be socially active – with the consent of their guardians”. The knife-wielding man killed 19 patients and injured 25.
In 2001, a man killed eight children and injured 13 others in a knife attack at an elementary school in the city of Osaka.
8 June 2008 – a man drove a truck into a packed shopping district at Akihabara in Tokyo, before climbing out and randomly stabbing people.
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Japan has one of the lowest crime rates in the world and residents of Sagamihara said they were in shock.
