Tokyo Court Rejects Aum Cult Leader’s Retrial Plea, Kyodo Says

 

By Stuart Biggs

March 19 (Bloomberg)—The Tokyo District Court turned down a request for a retrial for Shoko Asahara, the leader of the Aum Shinrikyo cult who was sentenced to death for the murder of 19 people in sarin gas attacks in Japan, Kyodo News reported.

The retrial plea, filed in November by Asahara’s second daughter, was turned down because what it claims is new evidence wouldn’t be sufficient to overturn his sentence, Kyodo said, citing unidentified people familiar with the case. The report didn’t provide further details of the contents of the plea.

Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, was sentenced to death in February 2004 for the attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 that killed 12 people and another attack in the city of Matsumoto a year earlier that left seven people dead. The group is alleged to have killed 27 people in total.

Asahara, 54, lost a final appeal against the death sentence in September 2006, Kyodo said.

14 years later, Asahara might face the gallows this year…

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