Japan hangs 7 for cult sarin attack in 1995

The Aum cult’s sarin attack in Tokyo

TOKYO — Japan on Friday executed the former leader of a doomsday cult and six other members of the group that carried out a sarin attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, killing 13 people and shattering the country’s myth of public safety.

The Aum Shinrikyo, or Aum Supreme Truth, staged a series of crimes including simultaneous sarin attacks on subway trains during the notoriously crowded rushhour in March 1995. Sarin, a nerve agent, was originally developed by the Nazis.

The images of bodies, many in business suits, sprawled across platforms stunned Japan and triggered public safety steps such as the removal of nontransparent rubbish bins that remain in force to this day. The attack also injured at least 5,000 people.

Chizuo Matsumoto, the cult’s leader, who went by the name Shoko Asahara, was the first to be hanged, media reports said after breaking into regular programming to report the news.

Announcements of the other hangings followed through the morning. The Justice Ministry confirmed the executions of the seven.

“When I heard the news, I reacted calmly . ... But I did feel the world had become slightly brighter,” said Atsushi Sakahara, a film director who was injured in the sarin attack at Tokyo’s Roppongi Station.

“I’ve been in pain for years. It will be impossible to ever forget the incident, but the execution brings a kind of closure,” he said.

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

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

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 over 20 years of trials, which came to an end in January.

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 traveled forward in time to 2006 and talked to people then about what World War III 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.

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

That attack failed to kill the judges but killed eight other people and injured hundreds.