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Court Starts Process for Psychiatric Exams of AUM Founder Asahara

Kyodo News Service, Japan
Sep. 12, 2005
home.kyodo.co.jp

ReligionNewsBlog.com • Monday September 12, 2005

TOKYO, Sept. 12–(Kyodo) _ The Tokyo High Court said Monday that it initiated last week a process to begin conducting psychiatric examinations of AUM Shinrikyo cult founder Shoko Asahara to determine whether he is competent to stand trial to appeal his death sentence.

The court interviewed a psychiatrist last week and the psychiatrist will conduct the psychiatric exam at the Tokyo Detention House and review the records of Asahara’s trial, it said.

The examination of Asahara, 50, will take about two months, and the court will judge whether he is competent based on the results, according to the court.

Last week’s questioning of the psychiatrist was held without the presence of the defense team despite its request for attendance.

In a normal trial, such questioning is conducted with the presence of the defense team, but the court decided not to allow Asahara’s lawyers to attend.

Aum Shinrikyo

Aum Shinrikyo’s history of violence

How Aum justified violence

Life inside Aum Shinrikyo

Robert Jay Lifton describes Aum’s ideological totalism

How cult apologists, including J. Gordon Melton and James R. Lewis, defended Aum Shrinrikyo

Aum Shinrikyo (now called ‘Aleph’) continues

Research resources on Aum Shinrikyo

The lawyers did not submit a document stating the reasons for Asahara’s appeal against his death sentence by the Aug. 31 deadline partly to protest the court’s decision.

If the high court concludes from the psychiatric exam that Asahara is competent, and the defense team still does not submit the document by the time the results are out, the court is highly likely to dismiss the appeal, finalizing the death sentence handed down in February last year.

Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, was sentenced to death at the Tokyo District Court for his role in 13 criminal cases including the fatal sarin nerve attacks on the Tokyo subway systems.

AUM has renamed itself Aleph.