Japanese doomsday guru Shoko Asahara on Thursday maintained his silence on charges against him, refusing to enter a plea in the 1989 slaying of an anti-cult lawyer and his family.
"There's nothing to say here now," the 41-year-old Asahara, dressed in dark blue robes and sandals, told the court in his fourth appearance.Asahara, who was tried in April in last year's deadly nerve gas attack on Tokyo subways, on Thursday faced murder charges in the killings of anti-cult lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto, his wife Satoko and their baby son.
The family vanished from their apartment in Yokohama, near Tokyo, in 1989 when Sakamoto was active in a lawyers group helping people quit Asahara's Aum Shinri Kyo (Supreme Truth Sect).
Their bodies were found in three separate shallow graves last October.
Prosecutors said Asahara ordered senior members of the cult to kill Sakamoto after hearing that the lawyer was making negative remarks about the cult he started in 1987.
"We must kill Sakamoto," Asahara was quoted as telling his disciples. "If we leave things as it is, (he) will be a great disruption to the cult in the future."
Asahara, who at times fiddled nervously with his beard and hands, appeared to doze off during the session in the hot Tokyo courtroom, forcing his lawyers to nudge him awake.
In previous court hearings, Asahara also refused to enter pleas to six charges, including the sarin gas attack in March 1995 that killed 12 people and injured about 5,000.
The nearly blind former yoga teacher on Thursday also declined to enter pleas on charges for the February 1989 murder of follower Shuji Taguchi and for production of illegal drugs.
Asahara, who has been indicted in a total of 17 criminal cases, will next appear in court on June 27.