Japanese man faces verdict over Briton's death

By George Nishiyama

TOKYO (Reuters) - A former Japanese businessman charged with serial rape and killing two foreign women, including Briton Lucie Blackman in 2000, faces a court verdict on Tuesday in a case experts call the worst sex crime in Japanese history.

Former property developer Joji Obara, 54, is charged with total of 10 cases of rape, including drugging, raping and killing Blackman, a 21-year-old former British Airways flight attendant who was working at a hostess bar in Tokyo when she disappeared seven years ago.

Obara also faces the same charge in the death of an Australian woman in 1992, and has been indicted for drugging and raping eight other women.

"One person carrying out so many such cases, it's the first in our country's history," said Takeshi Tsuchimoto, a former prosecutor and professor at Hakuoh University Law School.

Obara has denied all the charges, while the prosecutors are demanding a life sentence, the heaviest sentence for rape resulting in death.

Blackman, from Kent in southeast England, was working in Tokyo's Roppongi nightlife district, when she went missing on July 1, 2000.

Prosecutors have said Obara took her to his beach-front condominium just southwest of Tokyo that day and made her drinks laced with sleeping pills and other drugs before raping her.

Police found her remains -- dismembered and encased in concrete -- in February 2001 in a beachside cave just 250 meters from Obara's condominium

Obara has told the court that he did drink alcohol and watch videos with Blackman in his room that night, but that she was fine when he left her the next day.

Blackman's father, Tim Blackman, arrived in Tokyo on Sunday with other family members and said he would be sitting in court for the verdict.

"(It's been a) very long seven years," he told reporters. "It's had quite an emotional strain on all of us, unfortunately, but hopefully this will be the end of it."

CONDOLENCE PAYMENT

Last September a friend of Obara paid 100 million yen ($840,000) as a "condolence payment" to the father.

Tim Blackman accepted the money, vowing to donate a substantial amount of it to a charity set up in his daughter's name, but his ex-wife, Lucie's mother, criticized him, saying the action could affect the sentencing.

Former prosecutor Tsuchimoto said if the court finds Obara guilty, it would hand down a life sentence given the attention the case has attracted abroad.