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Japan executes 7 doomsday cult members for 1995 sarin attack in Tokyo

In this file picture taken on July 19, 1995, Shoko Asahara (C), head of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo, is transferred from Tokyo police headquarters to Tokyo District Court for questioning. (Photo by AFP)

Japan has executed the former leader of a doomsday cult and six other members that carried out a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 in which 13 people were killed and thousands injured.

The Aum Shinrikyo, or Aum Supreme Truth cult, which mixed Buddhist and Hindu meditation with apocalyptic teachings, staged a series of crimes including releasing deadly chemicals like sarin and hydrogen cyanide in public places.  

On March 20, 1995, members of the cult left punctured bags filled with liquid nerve agent on train lines going through Tokyo's political district. The toxin struck victims down in a matter of seconds, leaving them choking and vomiting, the media reported. 

As well as killing the 13, the attack injured at least 5,800 people, some permanently with symptoms that included being blinded or paralyzed. 

The images of bodies, many in business suits, sprawled across platforms stunned Japan, and triggered public safety steps such as the removal of non-transparent rubbish bins that remain in force to this day.

This picture taken on March 20, 1995 shows emergency teams outside Tsukiji subway station following a sarin gas attack by doomsday cult Aum Supreme Truth (Aum Shinrikyo) in Tokyo. (Photo by AFP)

Chizuo Matsumoto, the cult's leader who went by the name Shoko Asahara, was the first to be hanged, the media in Tokyo said.

"I think it's right that he was executed," said Shizue Takahashi, whose husband was a subway worker who removed a package of sarin from a train and died as a result.

Executions are rare in Japan but surveys show a vast majority of people support the death sentence.

Rights group Amnesty International said justice demanded accountability but also respect for civil rights.

"The death penalty can never deliver this as it is the ultimate denial of human rights," Hiroka Shoji, the group's East Asia Researcher, said in a statement.

Cult leader Asahara, 63, a pudgy, partially blind yoga instructor, was sentenced to hang in 2004 on 13 charges, including the subway gas attacks and a series of other crimes that killed at least a dozen people.

Victims in 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack.

He pleaded not guilty and never testified, but muttered and made incoherent remarks in court during the eight years of his trial. The sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2006.

In all, 13 cult members were sentenced to death during more than 20 years of trials, which came to an end in January 2018.

Asahara, who founded Aum in 1987, said that the United States would attack Japan and turn it into a nuclear wasteland. He also said he had travelled forward in time to 2006 and talked to people then about what World War Three had been like.

At its peak, the cult had at least 10,000 members in Japan and overseas, including graduates of some of Japan's top universities.

Some members lived in a commune-like complex Asahara established at the foot of Mount Fuji, where the group studied his teachings, practiced bizarre rituals and gathered an arsenal of weapons - including sarin.

The cult also used sarin in 1994, releasing the gas in the central city of Matsumoto on a summer night in an attempt to kill three judges set to rule on it.

That attack, which involved a refrigerator truck releasing the gas to be dispersed by the wind through a neighbourhood, failed to kill the judges but killed eight other people and injured hundreds.

(Source: Reuters)


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