The Sasebo Summary Court has ordered that the 16-year-old girl held on suspicion of killing a classmate last month and dismembering her body remain detained for psychiatric evaluation, her lawyers said.
The court granted the prosecution's request to detain the first-year high school student for three months of psychiatric tests.
The tests will start Monday and continue through Nov. 10 to examine her confession to the gruesome July 26 murder and determine whether the teenager is mentally fit enough to be held criminally responsible for her actions, her lawyers said Friday.
In cases involving minors, psychiatric tests are usually conducted after the suspect is sent to a family court. This time, however, prosecutors asked for psychiatric tests to be held at the investigative stage.