An appeals court has upheld a 10-year prison sentence for a former member of a doomsday cult involved in a deadly 1995 nerve gas attack on Tokyo's subways, news media reported.
The Tokyo High Court on Wednesday rejected an appeal from Shinichi Koshikawa, 39, a former senior Aum Shinrikyo cult member, the national Yomiuri newspaper reported on its Web site.
Presiding judge Koshi Murakami backed the Tokyo District Court's March 2002 verdict sentencing Koshikawa to 10 years in prison for the 1994 fatal strangling of 29-year-old Aum member, Kotaro Ochida.
Ochida had helped another member escape from the group's former headquarters in central Japan. Two lesser charges against Koshikawa included threatening a fellow cultist who tried to leave the sect, and assaulting a police officer during questioning in 1995.
Koshikawa has denied the charges.
Phone calls to court officials went unanswered.
Wednesday's verdict follows the Tokyo District Court's conviction of former cult guru Shoko Asahara, who was sentenced to hang for masterminding the subway attack and other crimes that killed 27 people. Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matumoto, was the 12th person sentenced to hang. None of them has been executed.
The group, now called Aleph, is under strict surveillance by Japanese authorities. It still claims 1,650 members in Japan and 300 in Russia.