Reports: Japan police arrest three for posting online threats of more bloody attacks

Tue, Jun 17 06:19 AM

TOKYO (AP) _ Japanese police have arrested three people for threatening to commit crimes in online messages, apparently imitating a killer who fatally stabbed seven people this month after posting similar notes on the Internet, news reports said. "I'm sick of it all.

I'm going to do it too," wrote a 29-year-old on one site, vowing to kill 100 people in a popular Tokyo shopping district, according to Monday reports on major newspaper Web sites and national broadcaster NHK. Similar messages have shown up repeatedly in the days since the June 8 attack, but police have only made arrests when the writers said they were targeting specific neighborhoods, the Yomiuri newspaper reported on its Web site. Asahi newspaper reported that a junior high school student posted a note saying he would burn down a train station in Niigata, northwestern Japan, on June 30 and then "randomly commit murders.

" The report said the youth had been detained. In addition to three arrests and the detained youth, two others were being questioned, Kyodo News agency reported.

An official answering the phone at Japan's National Police Agency refused to comment on the reports. In the June 8 stabbing attack, a man rammed pedestrians with a truck, jumped out and knifed more than a dozen people in Tokyo's popular Akihabara district.

Seven people died and another 10 were injured. Suspect Tomohiro Kato, who was arrested on the scene splattered with blood, apparently foretold the attack in hundreds of messages to the Internet.

The messages continued until just 20 minutes before the killing began, the last one saying, "It's time." Police have closely monitored the Internet since the rampage, intensifying attention that began over suicide Internet sites that show viewers how to kill themselves by mixing household chemicals and inhaling the toxic fumes.

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