Ex-Aum member Kikuchi acquitted in 1995 mail bomb attack

December 27, 2017

Tokyo- Japan's Supreme Court has cleared former Aum Shinrikyo member Naoko Kikuchi, 46, of her alleged role in the 1995 mail bomb attack by the doomsday cult group.

In its decision dated Monday, the top court's First Petty Bench dismissed the prosecution's appeal against Tokyo High Court's ruling in November 2015 that overturned a guilty verdict for Kikuchi given by lay judges at Tokyo District Court in June 2014. The top court panel's five justices made the decision unanimously.

She is the second to be confirmed innocent in any of the series of Aum-linked cases.

In the May 1995 incident, a parcel addressed to Tokyo's governor blew up at the metropolitan government office, severely wounding a metropolitan official who opened the parcel.

Kikuchi was charged with helping then Aum executive Yoshihiro Inoue, 47, who is now on death row, and others carry out the mail attack, by conveying chemicals used in the explosive from a facility of the cult in Yamanashi Prefecture to a secret base in Tokyo.

In her trial, the defense admitted her delivery of the chemicals, and the main issue was whether she knew that they would be used to kill or injure people.

In the initial ruling, the district court said Kikuchi knew that Inoue and others planned to make a dangerous chemical compound as they tried to prevent the arrest of the cult's guru, Chizuo Matsumoto, or Shoko Asahara, currently a convict on death row. The district court sentenced her to a five-year prison term.

However, the high court found that it was difficult for Kikuchi to realize that they were producing an explosive. The high court acquitted her, noting that there remained reasonable doubts that she intended to support the murder attempt.

The Supreme Court panel said the perception that some dangerous compound was being produced could have only led to the detection of an "abstract possibility" of a deadly incident happening. It thus backed the high court's decision.

After Kikuchi was placed on the special wanted list in May 1995, she went underground, together with then Aum colleague Katsuya Takahashi, 59, who is now waiting for the Supreme Court's judgment on his appeal against an indefinite prison term given by a lower court.

Kikuchi was arrested in June 2012, when she was sheltered by a different man. Jiji Press