Last six members of Japan doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo behind deadly 1995 Tokyo sarin attack are executed
The Sarin attack, Japan's worst terror incident, killed 13 people and injured thousands more
JAPAN has executed the last six members of the doomsday cult for a series of crimes in the 1990s including a sarin gas attack on Tokyo subways that killed 13 people.
Seven other members, including cult leader Shoko Asahara, were hanged about three weeks ago.
Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa called their crimes unprecedentedly heinous and said they should never be repeated.
Named Aum Shinrikyo, or Supreme Truth, the cult was blamed for 27 deaths before authorities raided its compound near Mount Fuji in 1995 and captured Asahara nearly two months later.
The group's most notorious crime was the March 20 1995 subway attack which killed 13 people and injured 6,000.
It remains Japan's deadliest terror attack.
During rush hour in March 1995, cult members left bags of liquid on trains before puncturing them with umbrellas, leaving commuters choking, vomiting, blinded and paralysed by the toxic fumes.
Even during his trial, Asahara never explained the actual motivations for the crimes and has refused visitors in prison for the past decade.
Four of the six executed today released sarin on the subway.
The two others were convicted in other crimes, including the 1989 murders of an anti-Aum lawyer, 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.
Sarin, a nerve gas, was originally developed by the Nazis.
At its peak, the cult had 200 live-in followers and 10,000 followers in Japan. It still has followers in Japan and eastern Europe.
In a secret base at the foot of Mount Fuji built, the group operated a chemical plant to mass-produce sarin and another to assemble illegal automatic rifles.
Asahara, whose original name was Chizuo Matsumoto, founded Aum Shinrikyo in 1984.
He claimed Armageddon was inevitable and promised members they would ascend to heaven if they carried out his bidding.
He claimed he was both the reincarnated spirit of Jesus Christ and the first "enlightened one" since Buddha.
Capital punishment is still applied in Japan to people who carry out multiple murders. The 13 members have sat on death row while Japan argued about what to do with them.
Activists argued their executions would make them martyrs.
Despite international condemnation, public support for the death penalty remains high in Japan.
The last execution in the country was Teruhiko Seki, 44, in December last year.
Seki was a minor when he killed four people - a 42-year-old corporate executive, the man’s wife, 36, their four-year-old daughter and the executive’s 83-year-old mum.
The last time Japan executed more than 10 people in a year was in 2008. It is also extremely rare for Japan to carry out two rounds of executions in the same month.
EXECUTED FOR THE SUBWAY ATTACK
MASATO YOKOYAMA, 55, carried sarin in a plastic bag into the Marunouchi subway line, punctured the bag and fled. His actions seriously injured about 200 people among the 6,000 hurt by the five simultaneous attacks carried out during the morning rush hour on March 20, 1995.
YASUO HAYASHI, 60, joined the cult in 1988 after reading Shoko Asahara's book and became the cult leader's bodyguard. Hayashi stabbed three bags of sarin on the Hibiya subway line before fleeing. After more than a year at large, he was arrested on the southern resort island of Ishigaki in 1996.
TORU TOYODA, 50, released sarin on the Hibiya subway line.
KENICHI HIROSE: 54, released sarin on the Marunouchi subway line and was convicted for the attack and for illegal weapons production.
KAZUAKI OKASAKI, 57, graduated from an industrial high school and worked at construction sites before donating all his savings to the cult and moving to its commune in 1986. Okasaki fled the group after the 1989 killing of anti-cult lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto, his wife and their baby boy at their Yokohama home, and he surrendered in 1995.
SATORU HASHIMOTO, 51, served in an assault unit of the cult using his experience in karate. Hashimoto was one of six cultists who strangled the lawyer's family to death and he also drove a vehicle to spray sarin in Matsumoto in 1994, an attack that killed eight people and preceded the subway attack.
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