At the request of defense lawyers, Tokyo District Court officials inspected three buildings at a facility once owned by Aum Shinrikyo in Yamanashi Prefecture in connection with trials of the cult's founder and another senior member.
Court officials, accompanied by prosecutors and lawyers in the trials of founder Shoko Asahara and Yoshihiro Inoue, conducted the first examination of the buildings including Satyam No. 7, where nerve gas was allegedly produced.
Asahara and Inoue did not go to the site in the village of Kamikuishiki, at the foot of Mount Fuji. Court officials took pictures and videotaped portions of the buildings' interiors. These materials are expected to be used as evidence in the trials.
All three buildings inspected were allegedly utilized as chemical plants to produce the nerve gas used in attacks on the Tokyo subway system in 1995 and in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, in 1994.
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