Man under arrest for murder sold sleeping pills to 12 people through suicide site

KAWASAKI -- A man under arrest for killing a woman at her request had sold sleeping pills to 12 people who accessed his online suicide site for a combined total of 1 million yen, police said.

Kazunari Saito, 33, admitted to the allegations during questioning. "I set up the site to earn money. I decided the price of the drugs through negotiations with customers," he was quoted as telling investigators.

Saito began to sell sleeping pills through a mobile phone suicide Website he set up in June 2006, Kanagawa Prefectural Police said.

He sold sleeping pills to 12 people including those from Yokohama, the Saitama Prefecture city of Koshigaya, Kobe and Fukuoka over a 10-month period.

One of the customers, a resident of Chiba Prefecture, subsequently committed suicide by swallowing the pills.

However, prefectural police have deemed it difficult to form a case against Saito for assisting suicides. Investigators have pointed out they failed to prove the causal relations between the drug and the death of the victim and that they cannot confirm that Saito urged the victim to commit suicide.

Saito was arrested in July for violating the Narcotics and Psychotropics Control Law by illegally selling sleeping pills and was subsequently hit with a new arrest warrant on suspicion of contracted murder for killing a 21-year-old woman from Kawasaki who visited his site.

Mainichi

October 12, 2007