A 58-year-old former resident accused of setting a fire that killed six people in Kitakyushu in 2017 refused to answer prosecutors' questions in court on the 6th, telling the panel he did not want to speak.
Koji Inoue is on trial at the Fukuoka District Court's Kokura branch, before presiding judge Junpei Miyoshi, on charges of murder and arson of an inhabited building. He has denied the charges and is arguing for acquittal.
Questioning of the defendant had been scheduled for the 5th and the 6th. Prosecutors asked about the period around a year before the fire, when Inoue lived at the Nakamura So Rokku apartment building. He repeated that he did not want to answer and indicated he would also refuse questions from the judges and the lay judges, so the questioning ended that day.
Defense questioning answered in full
The previous day, the defense asked about his life at the building and Inoue answered every question. He said he had no trouble with other residents or with employees of the management company.
He left after about a month, he said, and had not been back since. Asked whether he had visited, he said he had not, because he had no business there.
The charges
According to the indictment, Inoue entered the building in Shimizu 2-chome, Kokurakita Ward, through an unlocked entrance on its west side at about 11:10 p.m. on May 7, 2017. Sixteen people lived there and 14 were home at the time.
Prosecutors allege he lit a fire with something like a gas torch in front of a first-floor toilet, burning about 283 square meters in total, killing six people and injuring five others to varying degrees.
With the defendant declining to answer, the court is left to weigh the prosecution case largely on circumstantial evidence, and the trial turns on whether the fire was set at all and whether Inoue was the one who set it.