A key member of Japan's powerful Sumiyoshi-kai underworld group yesterday was sentenced to hang for a series of shootings that ended with five people dead, including three members of the public.
The shootings were part of an internal power struggle within the yakuza group, the second-largest in Japan with about 10,000 members.
Osamu Yano's actions were described by a Tokyo District Court judge as 'indiscriminate terrorism'.
In February 2002, Yano, then 54, accompanied two gunmen to a Tokyo hospital, where one of them smashed the window of the intensive-care unit before his accomplice shot Takashi Ishizuka.
Ishizuka had been shot in the arm and stomach two days earlier and was under police guard when he was murdered. Authorities were embarrassed that two officers were outside his room when he was shot.
Yano was also found guilty of ordering subordinates to open fire in a bar in the city of Maebashi, north of Tokyo, in January 2003 in an attempt to assassinate Masato Kohinata, a senior member of the affiliated Yano Mutsumi-kai gang. Another gangster was severely wounded in the attack - dubbed the 'Maebashi bar massacre' by the tabloid press - while three other patrons died.