JAPAN. HIGH COURT UPHOLDS DEATH SENTENCE FOR EX-AUM SENIOR MEMBER

the Tokyo High Court upheld a lower court's death sentence for former AUM Shinrikyo senior member Masami Tsuchiya for producing nerve gas used in the cult's mass murder of 20 people. The appeal court thus dismissed an appeal filed by Tsuchiya, 41, against the death sentence the Tokyo District Court handed down on him in January 2004. Tsuchiya conspired with cult founder Shoko Asahara, 51, to produce a drug called hallucinatory PCP between March and June 1994 in violation of the Narcotics and Psychotropics Control Law, according to the ruling. He was convicted of assisting in the murder of seven people in June 1994 in a sarin attack in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture. He was also found guilty of murder and attempted murder in gas attacks on three people including Hiroyuki Nagaoka, the leader of a support group for families of cult followers, between December 1994 and January 1995. The court also convicted him of murdering 12 people in a sarin gas attack on Tokyo subway trains in March 1995.