JAPAN. TOKYO HIGH COURT REJECTS ASAHARA'S APPEAL OF DEATH SENTENCE

the Tokyo High Court rejected former doomsday cult leader Shoko Asahara's appeal of his death sentence, bringing him a step closer to hanging for a nerve gas attack on Tokyo and other assaults that killed 27 and injured thousands.
The Tokyo High Court threw out the appeal by Shoko Asahara, the former guru of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, because his lawyers failed to file papers on time and because the court ruled that Asahara was mentally fit to stand trial. Asahara, born Chizuo Matsumoto, was convicted in 2004 and sentenced to hang for masterminding the 1995 Tokyo assault, in which members of the doomsday cult released deadly sarin gas on trains converging on the city's government district. The attack killed 12 people. Asahara was also convicted of plotting a 1994 gas attack in the central Japanese city of Matsumoto that killed seven people, the kidnapping and murder of an anti-cult lawyer and his family, and other slayings.
The nearly blind former leader, who once commanded a powerful group of some 40,000 members, mumbled incoherently during his eight-year trial, interrupting sessions with bizarre outbursts in English. He has also been observed talking to himself and wetting his pants, his lawyers said.