After a month of relentless police interrogation, cult leader Shoko Asahara has reportedly cracked - confessing not to the deadly Tokyo subway attack but to standing by as a sect disciple was strangled.
The confession, reported by Japanese media Thursday, would mark a major break for investigators, who had previously gotten little more than small talk and silent meditation out of the guru.Police believe Asahara, charged with murder for the March 20 subway attack, ordered the killing of cult follower Kotaro Ochida in February 1994 at the sect's Mount Fuji commune.
According to Thursday's reports, all quoting anonymous sources, Asahara has confessed to witnessing the murder but denies that he ordered it be carried out.
There was no indication he claimed to have tried to stop it. Cult followers have described unquestioning obedience to his every directive.
Asahara, who has been in custody since May 16 in connection with the subway attack, was formally rearrested Wednesday on suspicion of ordering Ochida's murder.
In Japan, police do not charge suspects, but an arrest paves the way for charges later by prosecutors and gives police the power to detain and interrogate a suspect.
Japan's state-run television network, NHK, said at least five other top sect leaders also watched as Ochida, a pharmacist at a cult-run hospital, was strangled to death.
Ochida and a friend, Hideaki Yasuda, had both escaped from the cult, but decided to try to rescue Yasuda's 49-year-old mother, a sect member who was ill and being treated at the commune, Kyodo News Service said.
Yasuda told investigators that Asahara ordered him to kill Ochida, saying Yasuda's life would then be spared, the newspaper Asahi quoted police as saying. "I thought I would be murdered if I did not follow the guru's order," it quoted Yasuda as saying.