Takayuki Okada, professor at Tokyo Medical and Dental University’s Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, testified at the 14th hearing in the trial of defendant Shinji Aoba, 45, at Kyoto District Court. As requested by the defense, Okada has conducted the second psychiatric evaluation on Aoba, after he was indicted.
A man accused of carrying out a deadly arson attack at a Kyoto Animation Co. studio in 2019 had paranoid personality disorder, but the disorder had almost no influence in the attack, a psychiatrist said Monday.
During questioning in the sixth hearing at Kyoto District Court, Shinji Aoba, 45, facing murder and other charges, said he learned from the arson attack against a branch of consumer finance firm Takefuji Corp., which went bust later, in the city of Hirosaki in Aomori Prefecture in 2001.
Explaining his state of mind just after the incident, Shinji Aoba, 45, facing murder and other charges, told the third hearing that he thought the police officers who came to apprehend him were public security department members because they arrived very quickly in response to the fire.
A man accused of carrying out a deadly arson attack on a Kyoto Animation Co. studio four years ago admitted the charges in the indictment, in the first hearing of his trial at Kyoto District Court on Tuesday.
“I didn’t imagine that so many people would lose their lives, and I now think that I went too far,” Shinji Aoba, 45, said at the outset of the lay judge trial, admitting that he carried out the attack.
The focus is what Shinji Aoba, 45, accused of murder and attempted murder, will have to say about his motive for Japan’s worst arson incident since the 1989 start of the Heisei period in terms of the number of victims.
The accused underwent six months of psychiatric examinations before prosecutors decided in December 2020 that he could be held criminally responsible. A separate evaluation requested by Aoba’s lawyers has also been concluded.
A memorial ceremony was held on Monday to remember the 36 victims of the July 2019 arson attack on Kyoto Animation Co.’s No. 1 studio in the western Japan city of Kyoto, marking the third anniversary of the tragedy.
Newspapers, including one reporting on the July 2019 deadly arson attack on a studio of Kyoto Animation Co., have been found at a home where the suspect in Friday’s arson attack on a building in the city of Osaka, western Japan, was believed to have been living, investigative sources said Tuesday.
The number of victims makes the attack one of Japan’s biggest-ever mass murders. This suspect’s motive as well as his mental competency are expected to be the focus of his trial.
Barrier Free Japan