Blackman family face year wait

The family of Lucie Blackman, the British woman murdered while working as a nightclub hostess in Japan, may have to wait another year before a court decides on the fate of a businessman accused of killing her.

Ms Blackman, a 21-year-old former British Airways flight attendant, disappeared in July 2000 after telling a friend she was going on a drive with a customer who had promised to buy her a mobile phone.

After seven months her dismembered body was found in a cave near a beachside condominium belonging to a Japanese property developer, Joji Obara, who has been on trial for her rape and murder since December 2000.

After meeting with prosecutors her father Tim Blackman, 51, from the Isle of Wight, said: "I was hoping that we might be looking at the end of the trial in the first half of 2005, but he intimated it could take the whole of next year.

"They have a court system which traditionally relies on the honour of the Japanese individual to own up and admit what they have done. So the system is not geared up to hearing the case of the defendant." If convicted, Obara faces three years to life in prison. He has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.