December 17, 2009
TOKYO (AFP) - A Japanese man who murdered and mutilated two Filipinas was jailed for life on Wednesday, evading the gallows after prosecutors had demanded the death penalty, a court official said.
The Tokyo District Court sentenced Hiroshi Nozaki, 50, to life in prison for strangling Honiefaith Ratilla Kamiosawa, 22, cutting her body into pieces and discarding them in 2008, a court official said.
Nozaki also received a 14-year prison term for killing another Filipina, 27-year-old Elda Longakit Yoneda, in 1999.
The two women were reportedly bar hostesses.
Nozaki was previously sentenced to three and a half years in prison for mutilating and destroying the body of Longakit Yoneda, but at the time he was not charged with murder because her cause of death was not established.
He was arrested again last year over the Ratilla Kamiosawa case and confessed to both murders.
Presiding judge Ikuro Toishi Wednesday called the crimes "dreadful and inhuman" but declined to mandate the death sentence.
According to Jiji Press, Toishi noted Nozaki's confession and said he could still be rehabilitated.
