A former member of the Japanese Aum Supreme Truth sect was sentenced to eight years in prison on Monday for murdering a fellow cultist and mutilating the corpse of another believer, a court spokesman said.
Toshiyasu Ouchi, the 48-year-old former head of Aum's Russian branch, was found guilty of the 1989 murder of Shuji Taguchi, who was planning to quit the doomsday sect.
The Aum group gained notoriety six years later for spreading deadly Nazi-invented Sarin gas in the Tokyo subway, killing 12 people and injuring thousands of others.
Ouchi was also convicted of mutilating the corpse of another cultist, Naoki Ochi, 25, who died whilst undergoing "training" which included being exposed to microwaves in a man-sized oven built by the cult.
He incinerated Ochi's body to dispose of it after the accident.
"The court sentenced Toshiyasu Ouchi to eight years in prison on charges of murder and mutilating a dead body," a spokesman for the Tokyo District Court said.
In his ruling, judge Masazo Ogura said Ouchi conspired with others including cult guru Shoko Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, to kill Taguchi at an Aum base at Fujinomiya, central Japan.
"Although he was surprised by Matsumoto's order, and he once questioned it and resisted it, eventually he agreed to the killing and acted of his own free will," Ogura said, according to Jiji Press.
The judge rejected the defense counsel's argument that Ouchi should be acquitted or convicted of the lesser charge of being an accessory to murder.
"The crime was egotistic as (Ouchi) disregarded the lives of ordinary believers for the sake of the cult. The manner of the murder was vicious and inhuman," the presiding judge concluded.
Ouchi, who was one of the oldest members of the cult, became the chief of its Russian branch in 1995, a Kyodo News report said.
He was arrested in 1998 in Cyprus on suspicion of violating immigration laws and extradited to Japan, because his name was on an international wanted list of suspects in the murder case.
Asahara, 45, is on trial facing 13 charges including murder for masterminding the 1995 subway gas attack, which was in revenge for a police crackdown on the cult.
Four minor narcotics charges originally leveled against the bearded guru were dropped last month.
"The move was to speed up his trial," said Osamu Watanabe, one of Asahara's defense lawyers.
The court has sentenced four Aum disciples to death for their part in the Tokyo subway gassing. Two cult members were sentenced to hang for killing the family of an anti-Aum lawyer in 1989.
One member was sentenced to death for both the lawyer killing and another Sarin gas attack in 1994.
The sect, which has escaped being banned outright, last December admitted for the first time its involvement in the subway gas atrocity and apologized to the victims.
In January, it changed its name to Aleph as part of a facelift and now has about 1,200 followers.
But Japan's Public Security Commission said the cult could still strike again, and police have launched a series of raids on its property since January -- TOKYO (AFP)
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