Religious cult demands cancellation of interview
.c Kyodo News Service
December 5, 1997
TOKYO, Dec. 5 (Kyodo) - Members of the AUM Shinrikyo religious cult demanded that Tokyo Broadcasting System Inc. (TBS) cancel the airing of an interview with a lawyer on the insistence of the cult's founder Shoko Asahara, the cult's former senior member said Friday.
Kiyohide Hayakawa, 48, told the Tokyo District Court during Asahara's trial that the 42-year-old founder insisted they prevent TBS from airing a videotaped interview with Tsutsumi Sakamoto, a lawyer who was opposed to AUM. Hayakawa was testifying as a witness for the prosecution.
Cult members allegedly murdered the lawyer, his wife Satoko and their 1-year-old son Tatsuhiko in 1989. Their bodies were found in three different locations in 1995.
Asahara rejected cult members' proposal to have TBS air the cult's refutations together with the lawyer's interview, Hayakawa said. TBS never aired the interview. Hayakawa also said another former cult member's court testimony on the killings was incorrect.
Kazuaki Okazaki, 37, was wrong when he testified that the cult had planned to bury the three bodies under its facility in Shizuoka Prefecture, central Japan, Hayakawa said. Okazaki is ''confusing discussions (on how to dispose of the bodies) with the time when we were trying to decide what to do with the body of Teruyuki Majima,'' Hayakawa said. Majima died while taking part in a cult training session.
Hayakawa also said when he and another of the six cult members who took part in killing the Sakamotos reported back to the cult's facilities, Asahara reprimanded them for having left a glove and a cult badge at the murder site.
Asahara is on trial in connection with 17 criminal cases, including the Sakamoto killings and the March 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system, which killed 12 and injured thousands.
Hayakawa, once regarded as the cult's No. 2 man, is charged with the murder of the lawyer and his family.
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