Last members of cult responsible for sarin gas attack executed

The last six members of a Japanese doomsday cult who remained on death row were executed yesterday for a series of crimes in the 1990s, including a sarin gas attack on Tokyo subways that killed 13 people.

Thirteen members of the group had received death sentences. The first seven, including cult leader Shoko Asahara, were hanged about three weeks ago.

Japan has never executed so many people in one month, justice minister Yoko Kamikawa said. She called their crimes unprecedentedly heinous and said they should never be repeated.

The cult, which envisioned overthrowing the government, amassed an arsenal of chemical, biological and conventional weapons in anticipation of an apocalyptic showdown. Named Aum Shinrikyo, or Supreme Truth, it was blamed for 27 deaths before authorities raided its compound near Mount Fuji in 1995, then captured Asahara nearly two months later.

The group’s most notorious crime was the 20 March, 1995, subway attack during the morning commute that left 6,000 people ill and sowed panic. The attack woke up a relatively safe country to the risk of urban terrorism.

Cult members used umbrellas to puncture plastic bags, releasing sarin, a deadly nerve agent, inside subway cars just as the trains approached Kasumigaseki, Japan’s main government district. Commuters poured out of stations, and the streets were filled with troops in hazmat suits and people being treated outside.

Ms Kamikawa said it was a terrorist attack that terrified people even outside Japan.

Four of the six executed yesterday released sarin on the subway. The two others were convicted in other crimes, including the 1989 murders of an anti-aum lawyer and his wife and one-year-old baby, and a 1994 sarin attack in the city of Matsumoto in central Japan, which killed seven people and injured more than 140. An eighth victim in Matsumoto died after being in a coma for a decade.

The executions were announced only after they had happened, as is the practice in Japan.

Asahara, whose original name was Chizuo Matsumoto, founded Aum Shinrikyo in 1984. The bearded, self-proclaimed guru attracted people to his cult who were disillusioned with a modern, materialistic lifestyle.

During an eight-year trial, he talked incoherently, occasionally babbling in broken English, and never acknowledged his responsibility or offered meaningful explanations.

The cult once claimed 10,000 members in Japan and 30,000 in Russia. It has disbanded, though nearly 2,000 people still follow its rituals in three splinter groups, which are monitored by authorities.