Japan executes Doomsday cult leader, 6 others

TOKYO - The leader of the Japanese doomsday cult that carried out a deadly 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway was executed yesterday along with six of his followers, decades after the shocking crime.

Shoko Asahara, the charismatic, virtually-blind leader of the Aum Shinrikyo sect, has been on death row for more than a decade over the attack, which shocked the world and prompted a massive crackdown on the cult.

The hangings are the first executions in connection with the nerve agent attack, which killed 13 people and injured thousands more. A further six cult members remain on death row.

Some of those affected by the attack welcomed news of the executions. "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.

The attack during the capital's notoriously crowded rush hour paralysed the Japanese capital, turning it into a virtual warzone.

Injured people began staggering out of the underground struggling for breath, with watering eyes as the attack unfolded. Others keeled over, foaming at the mouth, with blood streaming from their noses.

The sarin had been released in liquid form on five subway carriages at different points throughout the network.

The Japanese Self-Defence Force was called in and descended into the depths in hazmat suits and gas masks to assist the injured and deal with the poison.

Though concerns about the Aum had already been raised, the attack prompted a massive crackdown on the cult's headquarters and the arrest of Asahara and other group members.

He was sentenced to death after a lengthy prosecution during which he regularly delivered rambling and incoherent monologues in English and Japanese.

The hangings yesterday are the largest simultaneous execution in Japan since 1911, when 11 people were hanged for plotting to assassinate the emperor.