TOKYO - A JAPANESE court on Tuesday convicted a Tokyo businessman of abducting British bar hostess Lucie Blackman and mutilating her body but not of killing her, partly reversing an earlier acquittal.

There is no change to the sentence on former property developer Joji Obara, 56, who was jailed for life last year for raping nine other women, including causing the death of one of them.

Ms Blackman disappeared in Tokyo in 2000 while she worked as a bar hostess in Tokyo. Her dismembered body was found seven months later.

The Tokyo High Court ruled Obara kidnapped her and abandoned and mutilated her body, but said it could not prove he killed the 21-year-old.

'The court dismisses the first ruling,' said judge Hiroshi Kadono, who then handed out a life sentence for crimes including the abduction of Ms Blackman.

'The court recognises that the defendant is responsible for damaging and abandoning the body,' the judge added.

A lower court last year convicted Obara of the rape of nine other women and the death of one of them, Australian Carita Ridgway.

But the lower court had cleared Obara on all counts related to Ms Blackman due to a lack of evidence. He was accused of rape leading to her death but not of first-degree murder, which carries the death penalty.

Obara, who preyed on women in Tokyo's seedy Roppongi area, was accused of drugging his victims with chloroform, a colourless drug used as an anaesthetic in the 19th century.

The Blackman case received intense media coverage in Britain and prompted a personal appeal by then prime minister Tony Blair. -- AFP