The Tokyo High Court told Aum Shinrikyo founder Shoko Asahara's counsel Friday that it will extend the deadline for submission of documents needed to begin the guru's appeal trial, the lawyers said.
Asahara, 49, was sentenced to death in February by the Tokyo District Court in connection with 13 cases, including the deadly 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system and another killer nerve gas attack the previous year.
The submission deadline has been extended to late August from Tuesday. His lawyers had asked the high court to extend the deadline until February 2007, saying they could not prepare the documents because they could not communicate well with Asahara.
But the high court rejected the request, saying such an extension would be too long. The lawyers then filed a request for a shorter extension.
The lawyers became the defense counsel for Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, after an earlier team resigned following the district court sentence.
The lawyers said earlier that they were unable to meet their client at the Tokyo Detention House at first, and that even after he began appearing before them in July, Asahara did not respond to anything they said to him.
Last month, the high court had told the defense counsel that it will not suspend the defendant's trial despite the counsel's claim that he is suffering from a mental disorder.