Defense lawyers for Aum Shinrikyo founder Shoko Asahara cross-examined former cult follower Kazuaki Okazaki on July 17 and pointed out inconsistencies between his testimony and the depositions of other cult members over the killing of an anti-Aum lawyer and his family.
Okazaki, 36, fled the cult a few months after the November 1989 murders of Yokohama lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto, his wife and 1-year-old son. Okazaki and five other cultists allegedly killed the family on Asahara's orders.
Testifying for the prosecution at the previous session, Okazaki said the six cultists were called to Asahara's room in the cult's Shizuoka Prefecture complex early on Nov. 3, 1989, where Asahara ordered that Sakamoto be killed. The defense questioned Okazaki's memory by reading aloud the interrogation reports on two cultists believed to have been involved in the murders. The depositions said that five of the six were summoned to the room but that Satoru Hashimoto was not at the meeting.
Okazaki said in previous testimony that Asahara ordered Hashimoto to attack and restrain Sakamoto so other cultists could inject him with lethal drugs. "Hashimoto himself said in an interrogation report that he was ordered by Kiyohide Hayakawa to attack Sakamoto and did not say he was directly ordered to do so by Asahara," a lawyer said. "They are saying completely different things from what you said. Do you think he (Hashimoto) could forget about that kind of thing?" he asked. Okazaki responded that he remembers how he testified.