The Sapporo District Court on Oct 29 sentenced a 37-year-old farmer to six years and six months in prison for setting fire to a mosque in Ebetsu, Hokkaido, and burning it down. Ryotaro Ishii, of Chitose, Hokkaido, was convicted of arson of a non-residential structure and related charges.
Presiding Judge Shiro Watanabe handed down the sentence. Prosecutors had sought nine years, then refiled for eight shortly before the ruling to account for a donation Ishii made after his first hearing.
The mosque is owned by a Pakistani man. Ishii admitted to the charges at his first hearing in September.
A grudge built from online video
In court, Ishii said he had come to resent Ebetsu's Pakistani community through videos he watched online. "I thought that if I destroyed their religious symbol, they would leave" Japan, he said. He also told the court he had "watched too many strange videos."
The court convicted him of setting the building alight. The ruling closes a case that had drawn attention in Hokkaido's Pakistani community, which is small and centered on the Ebetsu mosque.
Other cases in the news
Prosecutors appealed a not-guilty verdict for a man accused of shooting a restaurant executive, the head of the Ohsho chain, to death, disputing a ruling that had gone in favor of a gang executive. A separate court in Kofu ordered a city assembly member to pay damages for disclosing that the Akutagawa Prize-winning author Li Kotomi had changed her legal gender.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi drew criticism for a post saying she wanted elderly people to keep working, published while she was facing scrutiny over skipping a G7 meeting. Disaster minister Shinji Hosono, meanwhile, urged the public to keep a week's supply of food, water and portable toilets on hand ahead of the launch of a new disaster agency on Nov 2.
In Spain, the passenger manifest from a train accident listed two Japanese nationals, according to FNN Prime Online.