A surprising, or suspicious, number of convictions are based on confession evidence, 90 per cent in certain courts. Suspects can be held for 23 days without charge, giving ample opportunity for police to squeeze out confessions, particularly in small communities where interrogator and prisoner may know one another.An Amnesty International report on hanging in Japan suggests today that several death row prisoners have been convicted on the basis of forced confessions. The biggest investigation since the Second World War has so far come up with much circumstantial evidence, but nothing directly identifying the sarin killers. Six thousand koban, or police boxes, are manned day and night and can always be relied upon for directions, assistance in finding lost wallets, and the price of a train fare home But by any standard the last six weeks have been a disaster. Clear- up rates are equally staggering: 96 per cent of murder investigations and 76 per cent of robberies end in an arrest.With their blue uniforms, bicycles, and discreetly holstered hand-guns, the police are a friendly and familiar presence even in the smallest communities. Japan suffers one robbery per 100,000 people, compared with 66 in Britain and 233 in America.

The other is the National Police Agency.Japan’s police is a popular institution and, even in the present bizarre circumstances, public criticism of police officers is rare On the face of it, it is the most successful force on earth. Other members have been arrested for trespass, riding a stolen bike and for driving through a red light.The strange charges shed little light on police thinking, but illustrate how the sarin affair is turning into a struggle between two secretive, inscrutable Japanese organisations One is Aum Shinri Kyo. But the warrant for Mr Aoyama’s arrest makes no mention of any of these crimes.Instead, like many of his fellow detainees, he was on a minor charge; for libelling a fertiliser company whom he accused of gassing Aum members at the cult’s Mount Fuji headquarters. Aum Shin Rikyo, of which he is a high-ranking “priest”, is under police investigation on suspicion of kidnappings, administering illegal drugs, and the manufacture and release of the sarin nerve gas which killed 12 people and poisoned 5,500 others on the Tokyo subway in March.One hundred and fifty Aum members have already been taken into custody; posters for missing suspects adorn public buildings all over Japan. FROM RICHARD

LLOYD PARRY
in TokyoThere was a poetic justice about events yesterday morning when Yoshinobu Aoyama, lawyer of the Japanese religious cult Aum Shin Rikyo, turned up at a Tokyo police station to visit a detained Aum member, only to find himself placed under arrest.It was no surprise, probably not even to Mr Aoyama himself. Whether Gaullist or Socialist, the winners next Sunday will not be entirely comfortable in their celebrations..

The area which symbolises the burial of Franco-German hatreds and is home to the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, promoter of human rights across the continent, is suddenly famous for quite different reasons. But Alsace and Lorraine are not exactly known for their Communist heritage, and the odds must favour a regional victory for Mr Chirac.Still, these are embarrassing times in France’s eastern borderlands. But he added: “There is a real problem with Le Pen supporters. Many will take refuge in abstention, and will doubtless choose Jospin.”In France as a whole, these will almost certainly include former Communist voters who have switched in the past decade to the National Front. But in Alsace, many people cross daily to work in Switzerland and Germany, and unemployment is well below the national average of 12.2 per cent, suggesting that other factors are behind the far right’s regional strength.Pascal Perrineau, an academic who studies the extreme right, said that Mr Chirac is better placed than Mr Jospin to exploit the notion beloved of Le Pen voters that unemployment, Aids, drug abuse and crime are all somehow caused by immigration. It would seem that many voters have fallen for a certain myth about immigration and have lost their long-standing loyalties to the traditional right.Much of Mr Le Pen’s national vote came from the unemployed and white workers threatened by economic modernisation.

But one curious fact is that Mr Le Pen performed strongly even in rural areas of Alsace where there is no obvious immigration problem.In the commune of Eschentzwiller outside Mulhouse, which has a population of 1,127 and only two families from abroad (and those from the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe), Mr Le Pen came first on 23 April. He took 26.7 per cent in Mulhouse, 20 per cent in Strasbourg and 21.1 per cent in Metz, capital of Lorraine. Commentators attribute his success partly to the special identity of an area that was annexed by Germany in 1871, returned to France in 1918, seized by the Nazis in 1940, and retaken by France in 1944.Mr Chirac’s post first-round emphasis on immigration may appeal to Le Pen voters in Mulhouse, where Turks, East Europeans and other foreigners from non-European Union countries make up about one-fifth of the population, and where three mosques now grace the skyline. Disenchanted with classic conservative politics and swayed perhaps by Mr Le Pen’s denunciation of Mr Chirac on Monday as the embodiment of “the worst of Jospin”, many extreme-right voters could simply refuse to cast a ballot. Mr Le Pen yesterday said he would cast a blank ballot.Mr Le Pen scored 25.4 per cent in Alsace in the first round, 10 per cent above his national average and ahead of all other eight candidates.