Japan executes sarin gas attack cultists
tokyo — Japan executed on Friday the former leader of a doomsday cult and six other members of the group that carried out a sarin gas 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 cult, which mixed Buddhist and Hindu meditation with apocalyptic teachings, staged a series of crimes including simultaneous sarin gas attacks on subway trains during rush hour in March 1995. Sarin, a nerve gas, 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 non-transparent rubbish bins that remain in force to this day.
As well as killing the 13, the attack injured at least 5,800 people, some permanently.
Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa read out the names of the seven at a news conference and said what they had done was “extremely atrocious”. “These crimes ... plunged people not only in Japan but in other countries as well into deadly fear and shook society to its core,” Kamikawa said.
Chizuo Matsumoto, the cult’s leader who went by the name Shoko Asahara, was the first to be hanged, media said as it broke into regular
programming to report the news. Announcements of the other hangings followed through the morning.
Family members of attack victims expressed relief.
“I think it’s right that he was executed,”
said Shizue Takahashi, whose husband was a subway worker who died after removing a package of sarin from a train.
“My husband’s parents and my parents are already dead,” the silverhaired Takahashi added. “I think they would find it regrettable that they could not have heard the news of this execution.” Surveys show most 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. A citizens’ group calling for abolishing the death penalty said it was a “mass execution that goes against the global trend”.
Some Japanese worried about revenge. “I cheered when I heard he’d been killed, but worry that his former followers might deify him and do something. We have to be on guard for a while,” said Twitter user Chie. — Reuters