Japan set to hang 13 cult members who carried out deadly subway attack
THIRTEEN Japanese cult members may be sent to the gallows any day now for a deadly 1995 gas attack on the Tokyo subway system and other crimes.
When is uncertain, such is the secrecy that surrounds Japan’s death penalty system.
Today marks 23 years since members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult punctured plastic bags to release sarin nerve gas inside subway carriages, sickening thousands and killing 13.
Cult leader Shoko Asahara and a dozen followers have been sentenced to death for that and other crimes that killed 27 in all.
The relocation of seven of them to five detention centres outside of Tokyo last week sparked speculation that executions could be imminent. In Japan, accomplices in a crime are customarily hanged on the same day. Ten of those on death row were convicted for the subway attack, a number beyond the Tokyo detention centre’s daily capacity.
As with all executions in Japan, when and where they will be killed is not being released, even to family members and lawyers.
The executions will not be announced until they have already happened. Some family recently asked the Justice Ministry for a chance to meet the convicts and witness their executions.
Their wish is unlikely to be granted.
Even prisoners sent to the gallows are not notified until guards come to their cells in the morning.
After a chat with a chaplain, a last meal or smoke, the prisoner is taken to the gallows. If all 10 subway attack convicts are hanged, it would be the second-largest number executed on a single day in Japan’s modern history.
In January 24, 1911, Japan hanged 11 political prisoners who allegedly plotted to assassinate the emperor.
Some survivors of the cult’s crimes oppose the executions as that would eliminate hopes for a fuller explanation of the crimes.
Born Chizuo Matsumoto, Asahara has been on death row for 14 years. His family says he is a broken man, constantly wetting and soiling the floor in his cell and not communicating .
His 34-year-old daughter, Rika Matsumoto, said he doesn’t understand his punishment and needs treatment so he can recover and talk. “I just want to hear my father explain in his own words,” she tweeted recently.