By George Nishiyama TOKYO, April 22 (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 metres 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. CONDOLENCE PAYMENT Last September a friend of Obara paid 100 million yen ($840,000) as a "condolence payment" to Blackman's father, Tim Blackman. The father 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, criticised him, saying the action could affect the sentencing. Former prosecutor Tsuchimoto said if the court finds him guilty, it would hand down a life sentence given the attention the case has attracted abroad. "The court would be mindful of any criticism that Japan is lenient against sex crimes, so it would hand down the most severe punishment," Tsuchimoto told Reuters. When Blackman disappeared, her family launched a campaign to find her, leading to a massive manhunt by Japanese police and bringing international attention to the case. In March, a young British woman was found dead in a bathtub filled with sand near Tokyo, leading to intensive coverage by the Japanese media and prompting comparisons with Blackman's case. Police have issued an arrest warrant and launched a nationwide hunt for a 28-year-old Japanese man over the death of Lindsay Ann Hawker, 22, an English teacher from Brandon near Coventry, but he has not been caught. Foreign hostesses from many countries work in Roppongi, where men pay hundreds of dollars an hour to drink and chat with them. But many work illegally on tourist visas, making it difficult for them to report trouble to police.
