The Osaka District Court on Friday ordered the Suita municipal government in Osaka prefecture and Mayor Yoshio Sakaguchi to accept residence registrations of two followers of the Aum Supreme Truth cult and pay them a total of 400,000 yen in compensation for refusing to register them as residents.
Five similar cases have been brought into court by Aum members in Sanwamachi, Ibaraki Prefecture, Tokyo's Setagaya Ward, and other places since the cult carried out its sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system in March, 1995. Friday's ruling was the first.
Presiding Judge Jun Miura said in his ruling, "According to the Basic Resident Registers Law, heads of villages, towns and cities retain no rights to reject residence registrations claiming that residents are assumed to pose threats to others. Therefore, their position was illegal."
The two cultists moved into Aum's Osaka branch in Suita around June, 2000, and submitted residence registration forms to the municipal government on July 11, 2000. However, a city official in charge of the registration rejected their forms saying they posed a potential threat to public welfare.