Former U.S. base worker sentenced to life in prison for murder of Okinawa woman

TOKYO, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) -- A former U.S. Marine and civilian base worker was sentenced to life in prison Friday for raping and murdering a 20-year-old woman in Okinawa in April last year.

The Naha District Court handed the sentence to 33-year-old Kenneth Franklin Shinzato who was working at a company within the premises of the U.S. Kadena Air Base in Okinawa at the time of the incident after having served as a U.S. Marine from 2007 to 2014.

Shinzato was accused of assaulting the woman for the purpose of raping her in Uruma, central Okinawa on April 28, 2016.

According to the indictment, Shinzato struck the women on the head with a metal bar and fatally stabbed her in the neck with a knife to stop her struggling.

The remains of the woman were found on May 19, 2016 in a wooded area in the village of Onna, north of Uruma.

Shinzato had admitted to rape resulting in death and abandoning the victim's body but denied intent to murder, saying that he had intended to let the woman go after raping her.

The court said in its ruling that the crime was conducted with selfish motivation and left no room for leniency.

The case has ignited and strengthened the anti-U.S. base sentiment in Okinawa which hosts the vast majority of the U.S.'s military bases in Japan and saw criminal cases involving U.S. military men repeatedly happen.

In June last year, a massive rally, in the wake of the woman's murder, took place in a park in Naha and saw around 65,000 protestors united in calling for the U.S. military on the island to withdraw completely.

They also called for the Japan-U.S. Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), an archaic agreement inked between the U.S. and Japan governing the handling of incidents caused by U.S. military personnel in Japan, to be urgently reviewed.

The rally was the biggest organized protest in Okinawa since 85,000 islanders took to the streets in the days after three U.S. servicemen viciously raped an elementary schoolgirl in 1995, an abominable crime that still haunts the consciousness of Okinawans of all generations.

According to the Kyodo News, citing data from the local police and the Okinawa prefectural government, a total of 576 heinous crimes, including murders, robberies and rapes, have been committed by U.S. military-related personnel between May 1972, when the prefecture reverted to Japanese control following postwar U.S. occupation, and last December. Enditem