A Tokyo businessman was sentenced to life in prison yesterday for a wave of brutal assaults on women, but was cleared over the abduction and killing of British bar hostess Lucie Blackman.
Joji Obara, a wealthy former property developer, was convicted of raping nine women. One of them, Australian Carita Ridgway -- a 21-year-old bar hostess like Blackman -- died.
Blackman's mother Jane Steare said after the verdict her "worst fears have come true."
Obara, 54, had been on trial since 2000 on charges that he preyed on young women working in the nightlife industry of the famously safe Japanese capital.
"It is natural for the victims to seek severe punishment. These were extremely selfish acts based on his abnormal sexual habits," Judge Tsutomu Tochigi said.
"The accused treated the victims as sex objects," he said.
But the Tokyo District Court acquitted Obara of all charges related to Blackman's death.
"There is nothing to prove that he was involved in the rape and her death. The court cannot prove he was single-handedly involved in her death," the judge said. "What is clear is that the victim acted together with the accused and then vanished and, following that, she was found dead."
Wearing a black jacket and glasses, his hair greying and thinning, Obara looked ahead attentively and occasionally nodded as the verdict was read.
Obara, who denied all the charges, was found guilty of attacks on five Japanese women as well as four foreigners -- an Australian, a Briton, a Canadian and a Ukrainian.
Blackman's father Tim watched silently in court, with an interpreter writing down messages on a paper.
Lucie Blackman vanished while she was working in bars in the seedy Roppongi district to save money for a holiday in Australia. Her dismembered body was found seven months later in a seaside cave on Tokyo's outskirts.
The case triggered a storm of media coverage in Britain and even a personal appeal by Prime Minister Tony Blair.
"I'm heartbroken, just heartbroken. I just can't believe this verdict," Steare said from England.
She did not fly to Japan because she could not face seeing Obara across a court room.
She faulted her ex-husband for accepting condolence money from one of Obara's friends, alleging [the money] influenced the decision.
Victim Carita Ridgway's mother voiced relief that the payout did not affect Obara's conviction over her daughter's death.
"Carita's family feel a deep sense of anger, betrayal and disappointment in relation to the 1992 police investigation into Carita's death," mother Annette Foster told reporters in Tokyo.
The judge said that Obara drugged Ridgway with chloroform, a colorless drug used as an anaesthetic in the 19th century. She died of hepatitis at a Tokyo hospital in February 1992.
Obara was not charged with murder, which would have made him eligible for the death penalty.
His lawyer, Yasuo Shionoya, said they were filing an appeal and that Obara feels "very sorry" over Blackman.
"He understands that Lucie was found in a sad situation, but please read the court's decision -- this was not Mr Obara's crime," he said.
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