Today, Japan executed the former leader of a notorious cult, named doomsday and six other members of the group who carried out a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, killing 13 people and destroying the country’s myth of public safety.
The Aum Shinrikyo, or Aum Supreme Truth cult, which comprised of 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.
Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa read out the names of the seven culprits 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.
The cult’s leader Chizuo Matsumoto 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. Shizue Takahashi whose husband was a subway worker who died after removing a package of sarin from a train said “I think it’s right that he was executed, my husband’s parents and my parents are already dead. I think they would find it regrettable that they could not have heard the news of this execution.”
Executions are rare in Japan but surveys revealed that most people support the death sentence.
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