Court in his first statement in the year-old trial he was not guilty of 15 of the 16 other charges levelled against him. It was Asahara's first formal statement since the opening session a year ago. The court allowed him to speak on Thursday because, in recent sessions, he has made several outbursts of largely incomprehensible remarks and has been evicted from court several times. Asahara, leader of the Aum Shinri Kyo (Supreme Truth) sect, claimed he tried to stop his top followers from carrying out the March 20, 1995, nerve gas attack which killed 12 people and harmed more than 6,000 subway passengers. "I ordered (top disciple Hideo) Murai to stop on the night of the 18th and I ordered (senior follower Yoshihiro) Inoue to stop on the 19th but it turned out I lost against them," Asahara said. Murai was assassinated by a "yakuza" gangster in April 1995. Inoue and many other top followers have said Asahara ordered the subway attack and other murders. Besides the subway case, the 16 other charges levelled against Asahara include kidnap-murders, illegal drugs and weapons production as well as a separate nerve gas attack. Asahara's court-appointed lawyers said in a statement Asahara was pleading not guilty to all but one of the charges -- the murder of cult follower Chiji Hamaguchi using the lethal VX nerve gas. After his initial statements in coherent Japanese, Asahara switched to an incoherent jumble of English and Japanese about an imaginary World War Three and said today was January 5 or 6 and not April 24. Judge Fumihiro Abe tried unsuccessfully to stop his outburst as the court stenographer and defence lawyers strained to understand what he was saying. He insisted that it was "January 5 or 6 of 1997" and announced that the World War Three has already started. In the end, the lawyer gave up trying to question him. Asahara also dismissed the kidnap-murder of anti-sect lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto, his wife and baby as a "small crime" and described the June 1994 nerve gas attack in central Matsumoto city as an "experiment." Six people died and more than 600 were harmed in the Matsumoto nerve gas attack.