<img title="Image: http://www.myvivvo.com/thumbnail.php?file=art.ito.ap_934699425.jpg&amp;size=article_medium" src="http://www.myvivvo.com/thumbnail.php?file=art.ito.ap_934699425.jpg&amp;size=article_medium" alt="Gangster faces death for shooting city mayor">
										
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								<span>A court in Japan convicted an alleged gangster and sentenced 
him to death Monday for the fatal shooting of a popular mayor in a crime
 that stunned a nation that takes pride in its rigid gun-control laws.<br><br>The
 defendant was convicted of murder and sentenced to death Monday in 
Nagasaki District Court, court spokesman Hiroyuki Mano said.<br><br>Prosecutors had sought the death penalty, while the defense had argued that was too harsh.<br><br>Mayor
 Iccho Ito, 61, was shot twice in the back at close range outside a 
train station in April last year while campaigning for re-election for 
his fourth term.<br><br>The crime was lambasted as an act of violence 
that aimed to stifle democracy, and it also raised fears about guns on 
the streets as well as about organized crime in a nation that has long 
boasted a relatively crime-free record.<br><br>Tetsuya Shiroo, 60, who 
police say is a senior member of Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest 
organized crime syndicate, was arrested on the scene. He told police he 
was angry at the city for refusing to compensate him after his car was 
damaged at a public works construction site.<br><br>The assassination 
was the second attack in 20 years against a mayor of the southwestern 
city, whose politicians historically have been outspoken pacifists.<br><br>In
 1990, Mayor Hitoshi Motoshima was shot and seriously wounded after 
saying that Japan's emperor bore some responsibility for World War II, 
enraging rightist-leaning nationalists. A right-wing terrorist was 
arrested in that attack.<br><br>One of Ito's daughters, Yuko Yokoo, welcomed the punishment as what the family had wanted.<br><br>"But
 even then, we the family are left with nothing," she said on nationally
 televised news. "We can only hope that this sends a message that such a
 crime will never be repeated."<br><br>Known as yakuza, gangsters are 
often involved in construction businesses, corporate extortion, 
gambling, the sex trade and drug trafficking.<br><br>According to the 
latest police report, gang members in Japan number about 84,200. They 
are behind two-thirds of Japan's reported shootings, which are still 
rare compared to in the United States and other nations at only 65 a 
year.<br><br>"We feel even stronger our determination to make Nagasaki a
 city free of gangsters," its current Mayor Tomohisa Taue said on NHK 
TV.<br><br>Ito was born in Nagasaki on August 23, 1945, just two weeks 
after the U.S. atomic bombing of the city towards the end of World War 
II. The other city to suffer atomic bombing was nearby Hiroshima.</span>
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