[Asia News] TOKYO: Japan's top court rejected an appeal from a former officer of the Aum Supreme Truth doomsday cult, giving the green light for the first execution of a member of the sect that attacked the Tokyo subway with nerve gas in 1995.

The Supreme Court confirmed the death sentence on Kazuaki Okazaki, 44, who was convicted of killing four people before the subway attacks including an anti-sect lawyer and the attorney's wife and baby son.

Okazaki has no other means to appeal unless a court agrees to rehear the case if new evidence emerges. He is one of 13 former Aum members who has been sentenced to death.

Defense lawyers had argued for leniency, saying Okazaki was under "mind control" by the sect's top guru Shoko Asahara, who has also been sentenced to death.



In prison, Okazaki was adopted by a mainstream Buddhist monk and has repeatedly apologized for his crimes. As part of his conversion, he has become an avid painter of classical Zen themes.

But Judge Niro Shimada ruled: "There is no room for leniency as the sole purpose of the crimes were to defend the organization."



"Even though he surrendered to police, his criminal responsibility is extremely serious," Shimada said.

Okazaki was a founding member of the cult launched by Asahara, a bearded and partially blind former acupuncturist who preached a blend of Buddhist and Hindu dogma with apocalyptic visions.

Okazaki, whose trial started in 1996, said he and five other Aum members on Asahara's orders broke into the Yokohama home of a lawyer campaigning against the sect, Tsutsumi Sakamoto, then 33, and strangled him to death.
They also suffocated his wife Satoko, 29, and smothered to death his one-year-old son Tatsuhiko with a blanket in the November 1989 break-in.

Okazaki was also found guilty in the February 1989 murder of Shuji Taguchi, 21, who had tried to leave the cult after witnessing an earlier Aum killing.

Asahara was sentenced to death in February last year for crimes including the subway attack, in which cult members spread Nazi-invented sarin gas on rush-hour trains killing 12 people and injuring thousands more.

Asahara faces an appeal trial but not even the first hearing's date has been set as his lawyers cannot communicate with him. His daughters have said their father is ailing and mumbles nonsense.

Executions are carried out by hanging in Japan, the only major industrialized country other than the United States to practise capital punishment.

In a system criticized by rights groups, Japan gives no prior indication of when executions will take place, with inmates often waiting more than a decade on death row only to find out they will be executed hours in advance.

JAPAN:

Death penalty upheld for top Japanese cult member


The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a death sentence for Kazuaki Okazaki, a former senior member of the Aum Supreme Truth cult, for murdering lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto, his family and another member of the cult.

Presiding Justice Niro Shimada rejected Okazaki's appeal, saying: "The crimes were organized, carefully planned, ruthless and brutal. The defendant's criminal responsibility is extremely serious due to his aggressive participation in the killing of the people as a senior member of the cult."

The appeal exhausted the defendant's last avenue to reduce the sentence, which the Tokyo District and Tokyo High courts handed down.

Okazaki, 44, became the first among 13 Aum defendants with death sentences in the district and high courts to have reached the end of the road.

The decision was unanimous among the court's 3 justices and confirmed the judgments of lower courts, which held that the murders were masterminded by Aum leader Chizuo Matsumoto, also known as Shoko Asahara. Matsumoto, 50, received a death sentence in his 1st-stage trial and has appealed the ruling.

The Supreme Court's decision to uphold capital punishment for a perpetrator of Sakamoto's murder, which is largely seen as the starting point of the cult's criminal activities, will likely affect the trials of Matsumoto and other Aum leaders, judicial experts said.

Okazaki, who changed his family name to Miyamae after being adopted by a Buddhist priest, has accepted prosecutors' charges since his 1st-stage trial.

In the Supreme Court, his lawyers mainly disputed:

-Whether his punishment should be reduced due to his voluntary surrender to police and contributions to the investigation.

-Whether Okazaki was in a state of diminished capacity at the time of committing the crimes due to being brainwashed by Matsumoto.

Judges at the first- and second-stage trials did not see any reason to reduce his sentence and concluded that his surrender placed priority on protecting his own interests, even though his surrender was legally recognized as voluntary.

Thursday's ruling upheld this view, confirming the lower courts' judgments on the effects of mind control. According to the ruling, Matsumoto's brainwashing had not destroyed Okazaki's personality and he willingly obeyed Matsumoto's orders.

The ruling concluded that his only motive had been to "protect the organizational interests of the cult."

Concerning the murder of the Sakamotos, the ruling said: "He killed a lawyer and his family even though the man had only acted professionally. It was a crime of a strong antisocial nature that neglected to take any consideration of this nation's law."

Lawyers insisted the defendant had deeply regretted his crimes since he had been arrested and had called on other members of the cult to leave the group in letters sent to the media.

(source: The Yomiuri Shimbun)

I just wondered if the hanging of this man can be justified. He surrendered, and he was brainwashed. Mind control is a harsh and very real thing. I hope they dont go through with this.