The First Sitting of The Court.

Our lawyers’ team consisting of twelve people had plenty of work.

We talked to Mr. Asahara, read records of the case, visited incident locations, spoke to the people who had something to do with the case. The lawyer Watanabe is exellent at questioning witnesses. Every day we went together to see Mr. Asahara, we talked things over and made various arrangements. On the whole I had a feeling that we’d become very close. The lawyer Watanabe’s outlook, the way he worked, his ability to intuitively comprehend the essence of the matter and his instant response – everything was remarkable. There was no trace whatsoever of hostile feelings that I had against him earlier.

He is not just an outstanding lawyer dealing with criminal cases. He has an innate need to wage an uncompromising struggle for the truth. He gained my confidence to such a degree.

He was the first person with whom it was so easy to work. Gradually we succeeded in solving various problems at a stroke. Although he was the eldest among us and headed our lawyers’ team, he did all work on an equal footing with the others. In the courtroom we would read out our claims standing up together and after the sittings we would leave it together again. We even got angry about the same things without any previous discussions. [In the end] we established truly trustworthy relations.

Once in a while there were such interrogations of witnesses when brains started boiling [so to say] because of the tension. It usually happened when we had to ask the same questions over and over again to crush that [invisible] impregnable wall between us. Sometimes when all the efforts seemed to be in vain, the lawyer Watanabe, who was as exhausted as me, would whisper into my ear, ‘Try to press here’ and there would miraculously appear a gap in the ‘wall’. He was a really reliable fellow-worker.

And when I was taken into custody and became the accused myself, many people turned away from me. But the lawyer Watanabe volunteered to defend me and he defended me to the last as my lawyer.

‘Let anybody say what they wish, but Yasuda is not guilty and he is sure to be acquitted’. If I were in his place, I could also continue defending the accused, but it would be hard for me to continue claiming confidently, ‘He is sure to be acquitted’.

But there was one point on which we had different views, and it concerned our relations with the mass media. The lawyer Watanabe believed that we had to go on the offensive and to stop discreditable information from spreading at least to some extent. He also believed that if we had a ‘good talk’ with media people, then anyone of them would understand and support us. So every day he had press-conferences and tirelessly explained the attitude adopted by our lawyers’ team. In his young days at university he was a member of the editorial board, that was probably the reason why he still had some faith in the mass media.

But I had a different opininon. The lawyer is only allowed to talk to defend the accused. It is impermissible to talk for any other purpose. Besides, the lawyer has the right to give a talk only in the courtroom.

In any case, it was wrong to meet media people. It was wrong to give them any information. If we stopped giving them information, then the supplies they fed on would run out eventually and they would have to become silent. [I believed] that if we wanted to give some information, we had to choose somebody whom we could trust. Some day he would tell a true story to everybody.

In principle, the Tokyo District Court had no right to investigate the AUM case, because sarin was released in a carriage of a train bound to N. station. The Tokyo District Court is situated near the exit from this station, and some people injured in the gas attack were found there, too.

The fact that the Tokyo District Court was carrying out the AUM case was equivalent to the situation when the victim was trying the criminal, i.e. the court was strongly biased.

To make this situation even worse, day after day the mass media were doing their best to make the atmosphere around AUM as tense as possible, arousing victims’ passions in order to stir up anger and hatred towards AUM in Tokyo to the upper limit. Therefore a fair trial in Tokyo was impossible.

We thought it would be fine if the trial could take place outside Tokyo, but we did not expect the court to agree to that. It would most likely insist on the lawyers’ team moving there as well. In the end [we understood] this idea could not be realized, it only remained a dream.

The debate with the court as to when to open the first sitting was becoming increasingly heated. The court wanted to complete the case as soon as possible at any cost, and it was obvious that its only desire was to start the sittings at the earliest date. To achieve this purpose, the judges were putting pressure on the prosecutors to make them bring the investigation somehow to an end. Mr. Asahara was even transferred to a Tokyo prison. So to speed up the investigation the court was prepared not to take the trouble to collect evidence. As for the right of the accused to have a normal defense the judges were not going to think about it at all.

We needed no less than a year to understand all the materials of the case, to inquire the defendant about the real state of affairs, to learn the opinion of experts and people connected with the case, that is to perceive the whole picture of what had happened and to determine the course to be followed by the trial. After all, the evidence was fabricated by joint efforts of thousands of policemen and prosecutors.

I realized it still earlier that until each lawyer looked into all pieces of evidence, it would be imposible [for us] to understand the whole picture of the incidents. Each lawyer had to form his own opinion about it. And only after everyone of the twelve lawyers came to understand what had [really] happened, we could get together to discuss the matter and offer different opinions. Otherwise there was no point in appointing twelve lawyers to deal with this case. We voiced our opinion, ‘The first sitting of the court is to begin in autumn’.That was the biggest concession that we could make to the court.

During the time when we had talks on the subject, a strange touch in the behavior of the presiding judge drew our attention. As soon as there appeared some friction in the talks, he would stop the debate and disappear. The same also happened every time after the talks – he would hurry away out of the courtroom and disappear.

Later, after looking into the room occupied by the deputy chief of the Tokyo District Court, I understood where he used to go. Every time the presiding judge went out of the courtroom he gave him a report about how the talks were going on and received instructions what to do next. In reality, the presiding judge was not the presiding judge himself but the deputy chief of the Tokyo District Court. And the presiding judge was just a puppet.

‘The first sitting of the court will be open in late April by all means’ – this unusually strong determination of the presiding judge caused confusion in our lawyers’ team. On the whole there were two different approaches to the problem in our group: either to make a compromise and try to come to an agreement at least about slightly more acceptable terms for us or to fight to the last. Even if we put up a strong resistance, the court might fix the opening date of the trial unilaterally. And because we could not then boycott court sittings the plan of the court would succeed. But the people who favored the other approach believed that exactly in this case we had to boycott the sittings, even if we were reprimanded and removed from the post of a state lawyer. We took a break and then resumed the debates, but we failed to reduce the difference in opinion. The first sitting of the court would be opened if only one of the twelve lawyers attended it. Until our lawyers’ team became really united, we would not be able to follow the strategy ‘to fight to the last’.

In the end we had no choice but to make a compromise with the court. ‘Let’s start after the public holidays in May’, we insisted, but the court rejected this proposal too, and decided to open the first sitting on April, 24. It was our first defeat.

If we had been more united, we would not have had any divergence of views on this point. As a rule, if there is some difference in opinion, the majority wins. But it was not so in our team of state lawyers, because we had to make do with those who agreed to join it. As a result, the minority opinion outweighed and determined our policy. Such was the situation when the first sitting of the court started.

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