NAGOYA, May 16 (Kyodo) - The owner of a building in Nagoya where the AUM Shinrikyo religious cult set up a branch office has ordered the group to vacate the building by July 31, police sources said Wednesday.
The 60-year-old owner told the AUM group on April 27 that he will not renew the contract to rent the three-story building in Nagoya's Nishi Ward and demanded they leave, the sources said. About eight AUM members are believed to live there.
He told a press conference Wednesday that AUM pledged in a written statement it would vacate the building by the end of August.
The man said he hopes to sell the building and the 880-square-meter plot, but ruled out the possibility of selling it to the cult. The sources said he wants to sell the property for 147 million yen and is currently looking for a buyer through a real estate agent.
The owner said from the beginning he intended to rent the building to the group for only one year and that the cult accepted the eviction order.
He also indicated he is seeking the eviction because he was ''bothered'' by press interviews and denied that AUM caused trouble such as delays in rent payment.
The cult opened the branch office in August last year under a one-year lease contract. Before that, the group had rented the building until December 1999.
The group has organized seminars for followers in violation of its agreement with the owner and caused anxiety among neighbors. Local residents had been seeking eviction of the cult and had collected 32,000 signatures by November last year.
AUM founder Shoko Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, and many other cultists have been tried on a number of charges, including the March 1995 sarin attack on Tokyo subways, which killed 12 people and injured thousands.
Several cultists have been found guilty of various crimes, but Asahara's trial is still proceeding at a snail's pace.
The group now calls itself Aleph.
AP-NY-05-16-01 0444EDT
Copyright 2001 The Kyodo News Service.