A court in Japan has sentenced a former US soldier to life in prison after convicting him of the rape and murder of a local woman in Okinawa, a Japanese island on which the US maintains several bases and thousands of troops.

On Friday, the Naha District Court found Kenneth Shinzato, a former US Marine, guilty of abandoning the 20-year-old woman’s body after hitting, raping, and stabbing her to death in the neck with a knife. Her body was found in the forest three weeks after she disappeared. 

Shinzato, who was arrested last year, pleaded guilty to the charges of rape resulting in death and the abandoning of the body but denied murder intent.

The southern Japanese island is home to half of about 50,000 American military personnel stationed in the Asian country.

The residents of Okinawa have long complained about the heavy US military presence and crimes linked to US personnel.

Shinzato’s case sparked outrage on the island and led to the signing of a bilateral pact between the two sides to limit immunity from Japanese prosecution for civilian workers at US bases.

US forces in Japan have a long history of unruly behavior, which together with other reasons, has prompted the majority of the Japanese population to demand their exit.

Since surrendering in World War II on August 15, 1945, and under a peace agreement, Japan has given US forces stationed in the country the right to exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction over its own forces.

On November 19, a drunken US Marine stationed in Okinawa killed a Japanese driver in a road accident.