1.1 The Trial Which Resembled a Battle

Mr. Asahara was not charged with committing any crimes personally. They tried to make him responsible for participating in a conspiracy to work out a criminal plan. But the accused pleaded ‘not guilty’ on all the charges.

Under the circumstances we had no choice but to clarify all the points of the case and to put to the test all the evidence presented by the prosecution. The defense adopted an attitude quite natural in the situation: we did not take on trust a single accusation of the prosecution and discussed in detail every charge count trying to find factual proofs pointing to the defendant’s guilt. If there is corpus delicacy, then concrete proofs must be presented in Court. And that is precisely what is expected of justice.

The main policy of the defense was to test once and again all the facts submitted by the prosecution, all the more so, because prosecutors based their charges only on written evidence of the witnesses for the prosecution and expert reports.

To make sure that those testimonies were true we held cross-examinations of witnesses and also revealed contradictions in the prosecution’s arguments. As a result, the defense team came to the conclusion that the defendant was not guilty. The reasons for such a conclusion were given in the last speech of the defense.

The prosecution failed to present obvious proofs of the defendant’s guilt on any of the 13 charges related to the responsibility for a conspiracy.

The arguments by the defense – only those of importance – were presented on 2,250 pages containing 400 characters each. It would take about ten days to read them. All controversial points and contradictions in the prosecution’s proofs emerged at the trial due to the investigation carried out by the lawyers and cross-examinations of witnesses for the prosecution and for the defense.

It goes without saying that before court sittings begin the prosecutor must put all available evidence at the lawyers’ disposal. But it does not mean that all these pieces of evidence are relevant.

It was exactly so in this case. All the evidence presented at the first stage of the trial, i.e. written evidence of the witnesses chosen by the prosecution and all sorts of expert reports were fraudulent. This was very apparent from the least examination of the case.

Some pieces of evidence were so strange, that it was impossible to understand what they had to do with this case. So, on the whole all the evidence turned out to be untrustworthy.

In Japan lawyers carrying out criminal cases are not empowered to conduct investigations and collect evidence for themselves. So we have to make do with the evidence obtained by the police and the prosecution. In Mr. Asahara’s case nearly all the evidences’ meanings [presented in Court] were specific in a sense that their real value and relevance became obvious only during the investigation process, after the first stage of the trial was completed.

It depends on the case whether some moot points can be clarified at an early stage. In some cases it is just not possible. There are lots of variants to choose from, depending on the conditions and on how intricate the given case is.

This time defending in Mr. Asahara’s case, we divided all the issues to be examined by the court in to two groups: the ones we had to fight for and the others which could remain as they were [for the time being].

But in spite of that we had managed to clarify really important controversial points only by the time the trial was nearing completion and we had to give the last speech.

But what about earlier stages of the trial? As a lawyer I had a hard time, for instance, choosing witnesses.

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1.2 Turning the Defendant Out of the Courtroom

This incident of turning the defendant Asahara out of the courtroom had a large coverage in the press, so you are sure to remember it.

It took place soon after the beginning of hearings about the sarin gassing incident in the subway, at the 14^th sitting of the court, to be exact. This case was a good illustration of the way the court sittings at Asahara’s trial had been held for eight years. A year and eight months after the incident in the subway and nearly a year after I was appointed a lawyer [for Mr. Asahara] the hearings about this incident began, following the completion of interrogations on other incidents. And the defendant Asahara was transferred from the The Tokyo Metropolitain Police Department to a Tokyo prison. It happened seven and a half months after that and six and a half months after the beginning of the court sittings.

The defendant Asahara strongly opposed the defense’s interrogation of the witness for the prosecution. It was Kenjichi Hirose, former Minister of Scientific Technologies in AUM Shinrikyo (further, speaking about witnesses who belonged to the religious community, I’ll be using their short titles). The defendant continued to protest paying no attention to the presiding judge’s orders to become silent. That was why he was turned out of the courtroom. The sitting of the trial continued without the defendant.

It was the only interrogation of the sort. It became clear at the sitting of October 18. The defense decided to interrogate the witness for the prosecution Yoshihiro Inoue, a high-level disciple. But the defendant Asahara regarded it as if it were a sacrilege and asked his lawyers to leave him alone. Therefore, when the defense began the interrogation, the feelings ran high.

Nevertheless, finding a moment between the sittings, at lunch break, I put a few questions to the witness Hirose, ‘Things on which the prosecution insists as being true, such as all those plans to obtain [chemical] weapons, for instance, extracting bacteria causing botulism from the environment or spraying bacteria causing anthrax, all this sounds unreal, just sheer fantasy, like in comic strips. Don’t you think so?’, ‘Well, yes, when you look back at it, it seems like that’.

Here are the records of a conversation between the defendant Asahara, the presiding judge and the lawyers at the sitting of the court when the defendant was turned out of the courtroom.

Defendant: On the whole it’s irrelevant…

Presiding Judge: The lawyer poses a question in connection with the prosecutor’s statements that is about the involvement in the crime and the like. If you think this deliberation is unnecessary, I can stop it. Well, quiet!

Defendant: Let the prosecutor put such questions. It’s really strange for a lawyer to ask them.

Lawyer (Watanabe): I am only asking questions to refute what the prosecutor is saying.

Defendant: This is not a refutation but absolute nonsense. You must really stop it.

Judge: The lawyer believes it to be important, that’s why he is asking these questions.

Defendant: This trial itself is nonsense.

Judge: You have no right to say that.

Defendant: In reality there is no state lawyer[1].

Judge: This is not so.

Defendant: There is no prosecutor either.

Judge: The lawyer is trying to help you, isn’t he?

Defendant: Just continue this mockery of justice, as you always do to get what you want.

Judge: What does it mean?! Well, take the accused out of the courtroom!

(The defendant is taken out of the courtroom following the judge’s orders)

 

At this sitting of the court the defendant Asahara made his attitude very clear, ‘What is essential for me is the honor of AUM Shinrikyo and its teachings. I have the right not to take part in this trial[2] and let me have my say as the accused. I have this right [too]. The AUM Shinrikyo doctrine is the Absolute Truth, it’s the same truth that forms the foundation of Buddhism. But when you try to show my disciples as being mad, this puts me in an awkward position before the True Victors (those who attained Ultimate Realization) whom I believe in’.

When the defendant said it, I fully realized that my questions (which I asked to show that the community’s leaders promoted a plan which seemed utterly absurd) were an insult to the religious community from all points of view.

But why did I persist in those cross-examinations? I began them when we had not fully discussed all the issues even in the defense team. But somehow I felt that a series of AUM-related incidents, which culminated in the Sarin gassing incident in the subway, was something different from what the prosecution insisted it was. The prosecution maintained that AUM was a terrorist organization adhering to a peculiar doctrine approving indiscriminate murders, and all the incidents perpetrated by it were a part of the plan to arm itself. But I suspected that those incidents were the result of recklessness, and they took place because the group of leaders with seitaishi Hideo Murai at the head distorted and misused the original AUM Shinrikyo doctrine. In March 1995, when its activities were in full swing, the community numbered over 10,000 followers. 99% of them had nothing to do with the incidents, they had no idea whatsoever that the community’s leaders were involved in them.

Meanwhile the followers were sincerely doing their everyday religious duties.

The defendant Asahara was the founder of exactly such a community, which the followers believed in.

Therefore, the police and the prosecution misunderstood the situation when they declared the whole community terrorist. It just did not correspond to reality.

The question was where this divergence between the reality and prosecutors’ point of view began. Prosecutors denied the fact that the defendant Asahara was a religious leader and his community was a religious organization, they looked at them solely as terrorists.

After all, the plan to arm itself was incompatible with religious purposes [of the community] and I thought that I would be able to find a strong religious motive in this incompatibility explaining the leaders’ actions.

Let us take a look at the situation in general. As a matter of fact, there is a rebellious spirit underlying the AUM Shinrikyo doctrine, it is a rebellion against worldly things, against ordinary religions [which acknowlege them] and it is based on ‘anti-shamanism’, the absence of a personality cult, though it was not at once that I became aware of it. But the group of leaders headed by Murai contradicting this doctrine, made followers and their subordinates revere them as gurus and brought the doctrine down to shamanism. This is how the system of ministries, etc. was set up, and the control over the community passed from the founder, the defendant Asahara, to the leaders.

On the other hand, the existing situation, as it was, was triggered off by such deviations and recklessness of the community’s leaders. It was clear from the start what this conflict and fierce attacks on AUM (started in October 1989 with a special issue of ‘The Sandi Mainichi’ under the heading ‘AUM Shinrikyo’s madness’), would result in.

One must say, it was those fierce attacks, the idea to ‘annihilate AUM’ that started this life or death fight. And fierce attacks still continue.

But not withstanding the tense social situation, the AUM founder defendant Asahara remained calm standing trial, ‘This is a wonderful opportunity for [spiritual] practice’. He used to say the same to his disciples in his sermons. But the group of leaders with Murai at the head seething with indignation against persecutions tried to do at least something to let the community survive. Now it has become clear.

You could consider it from any angle but it was obvious that the position of the leaders headed by Murai was different from that of the founder of the organization the defendant Asahara. It was because the leaders deviated from the teachings and the founder’s instructions that all those incidents occurred.

When it transpired, the first thing to do to keep up the honor of AUM Shinrikyo and to preserve the true teachings was to show that the plan to take up arms had nothing to do with the religious doctrine.

As I wrote above, it did not mean that I came to understand that at the beginning of court sittings. All the time I continued searching groping my way, but I was moving in that direction because I felt it was right.

Murai’s absurd ideas about the production of various weapons were the best confirmation of it. However, to make those facts obvious I needed cross-examinations and the best witness for the prosecution to serve the purpose was Hirose. But at first I had to explain the controversial issues to the defendant Asahara, so that he could understand why cross-examinations were necessary and approve of them. It would take time to prepare him for that, but we were given no time at all. I understood only too well that I had not done enough to prepare Mr. Asahara to agree to cross-examinations, but if I stopped them, it would look like a refusal to hold them at all, and then I would lose the chance to interrogate witnesses, including Hirose. That was why I continued interrogations in spite of the defendant’s objection. I believed it would be better for him if I did so.

But the result was quite the opposite – the defendant was turned out of the courtroom.

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[1]Here the defendant probably implies that according to Buddhism what appears to be ‘self’ is really nonexistent, and everything is just maya, an illusion (– editor).

[2] The defendant may refer to his right not to testify, to keep silence (– editor).

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1.3 Trying to Do What Was Best for the Defendant

The defendant Asahara’s expulsion from of the courtroom took place because the defendant and his lawyers did not come to an agreement about the policy to be followed by the defence. Such conflicts were not something unusual for me. But it was unusual that such a conflict sprang up not when we were alone with the defendant in a separate room, but at an open hearing of the court.

Then why did it happen? This incident had a direct connection to what is known as a ‘speedy trial’. The breaks between sittings were very short. And because we had too many hearings a month, we had no time at all to coordinate lawyers’ actions and the policy of the defense about cross-examinations with the defendant. As a result it was Mr. Asahara who suffered. He was subjected to criticism by ‘The Asahi’ of November 8, 1996 which called him ‘the most reckless person’.

In this case, rather than start cross-examinations it might have been better not to appear in court at all and thus to have a sitting postponed. We did consider this at the time. However, if we had not appeared in court, we would have contributed to an innovation, i.e. ‘the trial without the defence’. Consequent to this happening the existing system of choosing state lawyers would have changed, because it is the Bar that provides state lawyers for trials.

But I had a premonition that the day would come when the lawyers would have to refuse to appear in court. And so it happened on March 14, 1997. There sprang up a conflict between the judges and the lawyers in connection with the timetable of hearings. The situation became extraordinary – the lawyers refused to attend court sittings.

Incidentally, after the 14^th sitting (when the defendant Asahara was turned out of the courtroom) I had a talk with a journalist. The next day, on February 8, 1996, ‘The Yomiuri’ published the following, ‘The chief attorney for the defense Mr. Watanabe complained that he was tired and that they were attacking him on all sides. And at today’s sitting the defendant Matsumoto (Asahara) also showed dissatisfaction. Mr. Watanabe said with a sad smile, ‘Whatever the defendant tells his lawyers, they accept with understanding and remain calm’.

Although media reports are always full of criticism (and lies) but that time they were not far from the truth, describing the state of mind I was in.

Frankly speaking, in February 1996 my feelings were almost the same as in October 2003 when the defense gave its last speech – hopeless.

The defendant began keeping silence after the 14^th sitting. He maintained silence 24 hours a day not breaking it at the hearings. He refused to have audiences with his lawyers. And even if he made an appearance at them, he did not utter a word. And it continued till the end of hearings of this case. It was the world of complete silence, of a total isolation from the outside world. The defendant withdrew into his own religious universe and stayed there.

In this connection some lawyers believed that the defense team did not enjoy the defendant Asahara’s confidence anymore. And as the situation did not change later on, they thought that the lawyers allegedly ‘lost’ their defendant.

But I was of a different opinion. I believe that the main task for a lawyer dealing with criminal cases is to try to do what is best for the defendant. But trusting relations, which involve strong emotions, cannot serve as a basis for a lawyer’s work. All those trusting relations are limiting and too emotional.

A lawyer must not stop his work even if he does not enjoy his defendant’s confidence.

Moreover, I believe it would be presumptuous to think that you can establish trusting relations with everyone.

Thus, the defendant stopped speaking at all to his lawyers as well, and we could only try to break this wall made of silence when we had an opportunity. We had to make do with what we had, trying to do things which we thought best for the defendant. After all, court sittings would not be stopped because the defendant denied the trial and maintained complete silence. Therefore the lawyers had to continue their work for the good of the defendant. As for myself, I gained an experience of conducting a case under entirely different conditions than usual.

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1.4 An Important Task for the Defense

Here I would like to touch once more upon the main points in favour of the defendant.

Both in his opening speech and when emphasizing the main points in his accusational speech, the prosecutor entirely neglected the fact the defendant Asahara was firstly a religious person and his community was a religious one. He regarded the community exclusively as a terrorist group involved in committing murders.

That was why at the stage of investigation the defendant Asahara’s fundamental statement, i.e. ‘the most important thing for me is the honor of AUM Shinrikyo and its true teachings’, was not taken into consideration.

‘How did the religious activities of the community and its’ founder result in those tragic events?’ This important question had never been brought up.
So, the main task of the defence was to steer the court to investigate how ordinary religious activities had led to the series of AUM-related incidents.

In order to solve this major problem by establishing our own approach to the case instead of that suggested by prosecutors, we had to go deeper collecting evidence to prove that our point of view was correct.

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1.5 Is Speed More Important than the Truth?

If an ordinary person was asked ‘What does “criminal trial” mean?’, he would probably answer, ‘It is an investigation process when the suspect is tried on the grounds of the evidence that proves his guilt’. But, in fact, it is not so easy to find the evidence of what the person has done and what he was thinking of at the time.

But if you believe that ‘only gods know the hidden truth about what humans have done’ and do not try to understand the true state of affairs, there is a high probability that groundless or false facts may be regarded as evidence.

And if it finally results in the death penalty, then neither the lawyer nor the defendant will be able to change anything.

Some such cases have occurred in the history of Japanese justice, especially Menda’s case of July 15, 1983, Seitagawa’s case of March 12, 1984, Matsuyama’s case of July 11, 1984, Shimada’s case of January 31, 1989. I would like to emphasize that death sentences were passed in all those cases due to the miscarriage of justice. However, after those cases had been reconsidered four times, it became clear that the accused were not guilty.

By the way, in England the death penalty was abolished in 1965 after Timothy Johns Evans was executed due to the miscarriage of justice in 1950. It was abolished only because of that case.
In order to avoid such a fatal mistake as the conviction of the innocent, criminal justice has a special system, which enables it to carry out investigations, to establish facts and to pass verdicts in the most objective way. Of course, this alone is not a guarantee of a fair trial. But if you do not stick strictly even to this system, the results may be terrible.

This system aims at helping the judges to decide if the accused is guilty. They consider the picture of the crime suggested by the prosecutor and come to a decision whether the evidence presented by the prosecutor is a proof of the defendant’s guilt. There must be some reasonable arguments to support their verdict.

It means that all the prosecution insists on, i.e. corpus delicity and the facts based on evidence, remain only a hypothesis, a supposition until they are confirmed by the judges.
As far as proofs based on evidence are concerned, the judges must examine all pieces of evidence and dig up the truth together with the defendant and his lawyers. But because the process of establishing facts is changeable and inconstant, naturally, new moot points are sure to arise.

As a means of improving the system of justice the law was adopted, according to which the time of hearings of criminal cases in court is now limited to two years. I would put it as the law about speedy trials. So, nowadays all hearings, including rather difficult cases (up to 99% of all cases), must be completed in two years’ time.

However, there are cases which need more than two years of hearings. And there are serious reasons for that. If these reasons are ignored, lawful trials will not be possible. Every working lawyer who knows the real state of affairs will agree to that.

The problem lies in the fact that if hearings in court continue for a long time, it is a direct indication that the accused is innocent. When the prosecution’s proofs are shattered, it must be understood as a warning to discontinue hearings and immediately to bring in a verdict of ‘not guilty’.

But if in an effort to speed up proceedings such things are not taken into account, it means that some distorted logic is behind the present reform of the Procedural Criminal Code.

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1.6 The Criminal Court to Serve the Nation

By the way, as for the reform of the Procedural Criminal Code, the government is trying to introduce an awful, absolutely unrealistic bill, that is to oblige the defendant and his lawyers to solve all moot points before the first stage of the trial begins. Any debates on the moot points that were not previously debated will be banned. And this is not all. The government is quite serious about its suggestion to strip the Bar of the power to recommend state lawyers and to deligate this power to the Center of Legal Services of the Ministry of Justice, which will then provide private lawyers [for trials]. If this bill is adopted, then judges will be able to impose a penalty and discharge those lawyers who start a debate and disagree with them.

As a matter of fact, this system denies the basic right of the defendant and lawyers to have a debate in court. If this law is adopted, the defendant and his lawyers will lose an opportunity to prepare for the trial, as it was in Mr. Asahara’s case.

If you look back once again at the defendant Asahara’s case, taking into account the present situation, it becomes obvious that against a background of a large-scale social hysteria against AUM a very powerful police system is being created, which will stop at nothing.

It may occur to you: those rights that AUM Shinrikyo and the defendant Asahara were deprived of may also be the rights of the Japanese people who carried out fierce attacks against AUM.

Were those attacks against AUM something that has triggered off the present reform of the Criminal Code which denies the right for a fair trial?

I think the task of the defense team was both to examine thoroughly the evidence presented by the prosecution and to fight against the social phenomena mentioned above.

If you sum it up, it appears that the police have profited most by Asahara’s and AUM’s trial, but the Japanese people have had a bad loss. Is it not so?

Let us go through the Basic Human Rights related to the criminal court.

The right to have a debate. In the process of a trial the defendant and his lawyers may acknowledge some facts and reject others. But if they have no right to object to the prosecutor’s statements, it means that they have to agree to them against their will. But it contradicts Clause 38 of the Constitution, which states, ‘a person has the right not to testify against himself/herself’. Any law which contradicts the Constitution is invalid.

Further, Clause 37 of the Constitution states, ‘The accused has the right to choose a lawyer who has proper qualifications’. It goes without saying that the word ‘qualification’ does not imply the lawyer’s degree certificate but his real professional skills.

Hence, we should fully realize that proposals of the government, which aim at changing the Procedural Criminal Code, are actually contradictory to the Constitution, and that is why they are not valid. Lawyers who are human rights activists should fight against such changes.
The main question is whether the people, everyone of us, are aware of the fact that these changes restrict our personal rights? As for the coming changes in the Procedural Criminal Code, the government is striving to oblige the defendant and his lawyers to settle all disputable issues even before the first hearing begins (there is no such clause in the existing legislation) and not to raise any new issues.

But in this case a lawyer will simply be a puppet in the lawyer’s place with nothing to do. There are people however who would be both satisfied and served by this.

I cannot help saying that the project is being helped forward by irresponsible nonprofessionals, who do not understand how trials must be organized. They believe moot points to be something fixed and unchanging.

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Chapter 2. The main problems of Mr. Asahara’s trial

So, what can we say in short about Mr. Asahara’s trial?What is the role of the defendant Asahara in the series of AUM-related incidents, i.e. the lawyer Sakamoto incident, the Matsumoto sarin gassing incident and the Tokyo subway sarin gassing incident, which gave many people a real fright?

Did he give any orders? These are the most important of all questions.

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2.1. Religious and criminal responsibilities

April 10, 2003. On that day at the 253^rd open sitting of the Court I asked the defendant Asahara the questions quoted below, bearing in mind the defendant’s presumption of innocence and not holding him responsible for the conspiracy [which was not proved].

As AUM’s founder do you believe that your disciples are responsible for the crimes?

Are the actions of your disciples in agreement with your teachings or do they contradict them?

Why do you think a series of such crimes could have been committed at all?

Why were you unable to prevent the crimes of your disciples being at the head of the organization?

What’s your opinion about these tragic events?

What do you as the founder think of religious and social responsibilities in connection with the tragic incidents perpetrated by your disciples?

What sort of a world were you going to create, and why had those incidents taken place as a result?

We, the lawyers, admit that you are an outstanding religious leader and that is why we ask you these questions. If it were otherwise, we would not put you any such questions.

As usual, there was complete silence in response.

As I mentioned in the previous chapter the defendant Asahara stopped speaking at all at an early stage [of the trial], and he did not speak to his lawyers either. However, he kept silence not only during the Court sittings, but 24 hours a day for more than six years in prison. I think it is hardly possible if you have no strong religious motive and a great strength of mind.

We understood this silence as a manifestation of the defendant’s strong will.

We thought that the defendant Asahara as a religious leader believed himself responsible for what had happened. But this responsibility is entirely different from that in the Criminal Code and from what makes corpus delicity, i.e. the responsibility for a conspiracy.

To make this issue absolutely clear we insisted that to incriminate a conspiracy, which is considered a criminal responsibility, the Court needed concrete evidence, and the trial could only continue if it passed judgments based on this concrete evidence.

As a matter of fact, this had to have formed the basis for the Court sittings just from the start. However, the prosecutor completely ignored this problem either deliberately or unwittingly. And he entirely refused to take into consideration the fact that the defendant Asahara was first and foremost a religious leader.

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2.2. In his speech the prosecutor left out religious aspects of the case

Before we begin to talk on the subject, let us take a look at the prosecutor’s arguments. What do they tell us about the defendant Asahara and his religious group?

‘The defendant had an insatiable desire to wield power and to control others. He had tried to satisfy this desire since he started Shinsey-no-kai. The system of the ministries was set up to directly transfer the will of the accused who as a holy spiritual ruler was all-powerful and was at the very top of the community’s structure’.

‘Having as a basis peculiar and extremely dangerous teachings, the accused gave orders to his disciples and made them perpetrate various unlawful actions, including the incident under consideration’.

‘Although among the facts related to the incidents under considerations, there is no direct evidence that the accused gave orders to commit crimes through Murai (we cannot get this evidence because Murai is now dead) but if we examine everything carefully, we can easily establish the fact that the accused did give orders to Murai’.

That means that the prosecution’s point of view is as follows, ‘The teachings of the accused Asahara are peculiar and very dangerous’. ‘He is a man with a limitless appetite for power and control. Since he started AUM Shinsey-no-kai he had acted only to satisfy his desire to wield power and exercise control and he had sought to become an all-powerful holy ruler’, that is why ‘he gave orders to his disciples to commit various unlawful actions, including the incidents under consideration’.

You might nod in agreement, ‘Yes, yes… he’s like that’, because this is exactly the picture created for you by the media.

Here, however, I must point out the most typical examples of the prosecution’s accusations which are absolutely groundless, and the arguments which are not backed up by any evidence, but on which the prosecution insists. The reason why Mr. Asahara was prosecuted was his image made up by the media.

But the prosecutors did not take the trouble to arrive at their conclusions using objective evidence. Instead they made use of the ideas common among the public.

This is impermissible when justice is administered.

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2.3 Religion that attracted people and money

The religious corporation AUM Shinrikyo, whose founder is the defendant Asahara, had 12,000 lay followers and about 1,500 monks and nuns in March 1995, its best period. This fact is also confirmed by the prosecution. In March and April 1994 its monthly receipts amounted not to 1,000 mln. yen (as the prosecution claims) but to about 700 – 800 mln. yen, and about 1,000 – 2,000 monks and nuns lived in Kamikuishiki where the AUM headquarters were located at the time (from the evidence given by Tomomasa Nakagava at the 249^th sitting of the Court).

Why did so many people gather around the defendant Asahara and why were such large sums of money coming in to the community?

A former member of the community’s secretariat, a close aide of the AUM founder the defendant Asahara, the witness Koiti Ishikawa took as an example the opening ceremony of a new place for spiritual practice in Osaka and he said this:

‘A lot of lay followers participated in the opening ceremony of a new place for spiritual practice. And those lay followers asked Master Asahara various questions. I don’t remember all the questions, though Master Asahara answered all of them… Khema Taishi (Hisako Ishii) was standing by and she carefully looked after it. That’s how it was’.

‘Another thing… Once in a while Master Asahara turned in the direction of one of his disciples sitting close by as if he wanted to ask, “What do you think?” And then after he heard the answer he turned back and continued to talk to the lay followers. Something like that… He seemed to know everything about his disciples. Such was the atmosphere… I also would like to be among them. I felt like that… I also want to take part…’ (233^rd sitting of the Court).

‘At the time when I learned about AUM I was 18 and then when I was 21, I became a monk. I had a desire then: to experience at any cost, even ever so slightly, what state of mind you have when you attain Elightenment. I was striving after it with all my youthful energy. There was no holding me back. That’s why I was irresistibly drawn to Master Asahara. And now when I wonder if I could refrain from the feeling at all, I realize that it was difficult…’ (234^th sitting of the Court).

‘I had a feeling that he, as if he was your father, can really completely wrap you up and take into himself. How shall I put it?.. He really understands everything… my weak points, my whole mind, he understands and accepts everything – I used to have a feeling of peace and tranquility in his presence’ (233^rd sitting of the Court).

‘Someone told me once, “Master Asahara said that you were his son in a past life”. And then I realized that of course it was true, I had that sort of feeling: how wonderful that we’re together again at last – how shall I say it? – I’ll put my heart and soul into it, only let me follow you – that’s how I was feeling then’ (134^th sitting).

Well, if we do not take into account the emotional part of the utterance and just look at the facts, I think the evidence of this young man Koiti Ishikawa enables us to understand well why he was drawn to the defendant Asahara. Does anyone dare to assert that such feelings and emotions, like those of the witness Ishikawa, could be feigned?

If we study the contents of the evidence given by the witness Ishikawa, it becomes quite clear why people, who experienced feelings similar to those of the witness Ishikawa, became AUM followers. If there is no such powerful attraction, you cannot gather either people or money.

The prosecutor in his speech completely ignored this evidence. It follows that the fact that the witness Ishikawa exists can be omitted. However, if we touch upon the subject of ‘the conspiracy in the limousine” on an early mourning of March, 18, 1995 (I wrote in Chapter 2, paragraph 7 that ‘On March 18 the conspiracy in the car did not take place’), we have to point out that it is exactly the evidence given by this witness that directly contradicts some of the arguments in the prosecutor’s speech. In other words the prosecutor completely ignored the evidence that contradicted the police investigations and he did not give any reasons explaining such a behavior.

Moreover, the prosecutor in his speech ignored not only the witness Ishikawa’s existence and his evidence, but all the religious activities of the defendant Asahara and his community as well.

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