Man admits to killing ex-vice minister, wife but pleads not guilty+

SAITAMA, Japan, Nov. 26 Kyodo -
A 47-year-old man accused of stabbing to death a former top health ministry
bureaucrat and his wife and injuring the wife of another former official told a
court on Thursday that he acknowledges the allegations in principle but pleaded
not guilty to murder.
''I killed not people but demons with evil hearts,'' Takeshi Koizumi said at
the Saitama District Court in the first hearing of his trial in a case that was
initially thought to be an act of vengeance linked to the ministry's sloppy
pension record management.
Koizumi said he ''acknowledges in large part'' the indictment, although it
''contains elements different'' from what he may have done.
Koizumi is charged with murdering former Vice Minister of Health and Welfare
Takehiko Yamaguchi, 66, and his wife Michiko, 61, at their home in the city of
Saitama on Nov. 17 last year, and also of attempting to kill Yasuko Yoshihara,
73, the wife of another former health and welfare minister, at their home in
Tokyo the next day, although his defense council argued that he restrained
himself ''of his own accord.''
At the opening of the trial, the prosecution said Koizumi had begun to hold a
grudge against the health ministry when he was a junior high school student,
believing that his missing pet dog had been killed by a healthcare center.
He then plotted to kill people who have had experience of serving as vice
health minister when he turned 50, and wanted to get the death penalty, the
prosecution said.
The hearings will focus on whether Koizumi will win leniency given that he
turned himself in to the Tokyo police after the killings. The case is not being
tried under the lay judge system, introduced in May, as he was indicted in
March.
The verdict will be handed down on March 30, following closing arguments by
prosecutors on Jan. 13 and by defense lawyers Feb. 10, according to the court
schedule.
==Kyodo