TOKYO — Japan on Thursday executed six more members of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo, the perpetrator of the deadly sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, public broadcaster NHK said.

All 13 members of the cult who were on death row have now been executed, after Shoko Asahara, the cult's former leader, Shoko Asahara, and six other members of the group were hanged on July 6.

The attack killed 13 people and injured hundreds more, shattering the nation's myth of public safety.

Aum Shinrikyo, or Aum Supreme Truth, mixed Buddhist and Hindu meditation with apocalyptic teachings. It 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. </s> TOKYO: Japan executed two more members of the doomsday cult group Aum Shinrikyo on Thursday that perpetrated the deadly sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, public broadcaster NHK said.

Chizuo Matsumoto, the cult's former leader who went by the name Shoko Asahara, and six other members of the group were executed on July 6.

There are four remaining members on death row.

The Aum Shinrikyo, or Aum Supreme Truth cult, which mixed 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. </s> TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan executed six more members of the doomsday cult group Aum Shinrikyo on Thursday that perpetrated the deadly sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995.

All 13 members of the cult that were on death row have now been executed, after Chizuo Matsumoto, the cult’s former leader who went by the name Shoko Asahara, and six other members of the group were hanged on July 6.

The attack killed 13 people and injured at least 5,800 people, some permanently, shattering the nation’s myth of public safety.

The Aum Shinrikyo, or Aum Supreme Truth cult, which mixed 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.

“It was unprecedented level of extreme and serious crimes which must not happen again and terrified not only people in Japan but also foreign countries and shook the society,” Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa told a news conference. </s> Japan executes sarin attack cult leader and six followers

 The leader of the Japanese doomsday cult that carried out a deadly 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway was executed today along with six of his followers, decades after the shocking crime. Shoko Asahara, 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. </s> TOKYO (Reuters) - The former leader of Aum, the Japanese doomsday cult that carried out a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, was executed on Friday, public broadcaster NHK reported.

Chizuo Matsumoto, who went by the name Shoko Asahara, was the first of 13 scheduled to be hanged for the attacks.

The Aum Shinri Kyo, or Aum Supreme Truth cult, which mixed Buddhist and Hindu meditation with apocalyptic teachings, staged a series of crimes including simultaneous sarin gas attacks on Tokyo subway trains during rush hour in March 1995. Sarin, a nerve gas, was originally developed by the Nazis.

The attacks left 13 dead and injured more than 6,000. </s> Doomsday cult leader Shoko Asahara, the mastermind of a deadly sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, has been executed.

Doomsday cult leader Shoko Asahara, the mastermind of a deadly sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, has been executed.

Japanese government spokesman Yoshihide Suga confirmed that Asahara, leader of Aum Shinrikyo, was killed along with six other cult members.

Aum Shinrikyo were responsible for the 1995 attack which killed 13 and injured thousands, with the executions leaving unanswered questions about the group.

The reasons behind the sarin gas attack remain an enigma.

Cult members have said they believed Asahara’s prophesy that an apocalypse was coming and they alone would survive it.

In June 1994, the cult spread sarin gas in Matsumoto in central Japan, killing eight people and injuring more than 140 others, in an attack targeting residents who were protesting the cult’s presence in their neighbourhood and court officials handling their legal disputes.

Nakagawa and key members produced sarin at a cult compound and sprayed it from a van, in what was later regarded as an experiment for the subsequent subway gassing.

Under intensifying scrutiny from the government, the cult plotted the larger sarin attack on the subways in Tokyo on March 20, 1995.

Asahara guided the attack, according to testimony by his right-hand man, Yoshihiro Inoue, who also was executed on Friday. Inoue headed Aum’s intelligence unit and was one of the few cult members who later turned against Asahara.

The five cultists who carried bags of sarin onto the trains targeted three subway lines converging at Kasumigaseki, Japan’s government and political centre.

The horrifying scenes in the aftermath of the attack shocked a country where the crime rate is relatively low and people tend to take their personal safety for granted.

The investigation into the attack uncovered more doomsday preparations, weapons arsenals and multiple killings by Aum.

Asahara was captured two months later, dragged out of a hidden compartment in a ceiling where he had holed up to evade arrest.

In 2004, he was convicted of having killed 27 people in 13 murders and other assaults and kidnappings spanning six years that culminated in the subway attack in his elaborate scheme to hasten Armageddon that he threatened.

Born Chizuo Matsumoto in 1955, Asahara founded Aum Shinrikyo, or Supreme Truth, in the mid-1980s and it attracted young people disillusioned with the modern materialistic way of life.

With his shaggy hair and beard, the half-blind Asahara was the key figure in the stunningly random and lethal attack targeting Tokyo commuters.

He used a mixture of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and yoga to draw followers. They took part in bizarre rituals, such as drinking his bathwater and wearing electrical caps they believed synchronised their brain waves with Asahara’s.

Asahara chose doctors, lawyers and scientists from Japan’s top universities as his top aides, making them ministers of his pseudo-government of the Aum empire.

The group used donations from followers and earnings from yoga classes and health food businesses to amass cash to buy land and equipment.

They made and bought conventional weapons in and outside Japan, while the scientists he had recruited developed and manufactured sarin, VX and other deadly chemical and biological weapons.

The initial death sentence in 2004 became final after his defence team could not file an appeal citing his mental state. </s> Japan has executed the last six members of the doomsday cult that perpetrated the deadly sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995.

The six men were hanged Thursday morning, said Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa.

All 13 members of the group Aum Shinrikyo who were on death row have now been executed, after Chizuo Matsumoto, the cult's former leader who went by the name Shoko Asahara, and six others were hanged on July 6.

The attack killed 13 people and injured at least 5,800, shattering the nation's myth of public safety.

The Aum Shinrikyo, or Aum Supreme Truth cult, which mixed 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.

Kamikawa called it a terrorist attack that even terrified people overseas. She said at a news conference that the six executed Thursday had collaborated with Asahara and other cult members systematically to conduct an unprecedentedly heinous crime that should never be repeated.

The cult had claimed 10,000 members in Japan and 30,000 in Russia. It has disbanded, though nearly 2,000 people follow its rituals in three splinter groups, monitored by authorities. </s> Japan on Thursday executed the last members of the cult sentenced to death for their role in the fatal 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway, weeks after the group's leader was hanged.

The execution of the six Aum Shinrikyo members, years after they were put on death row, draws a line under the horrific attack which shocked the world and prompted national soul-searching over the group and its crimes.

"Today the state executed six people," Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa said at a press conference.

In all, 13 Aum members, including the cult's near-blind leader Shoko Asahara, were on death row for crimes including the 1995 sarin attack on Tokyo's subway.

Local media said authorities wanted the death sentences against the Aum members to be carried out before Japan's emperor abdicates next year, when a new imperial era will begin.

Since the Aum's crimes were committed during the Heisei era of the current emperor, authorities wanted the executions complete before the new era begins, local media reported.

Some of the Aum's victims said it would be hard to simply move on.

"With the 13 members executed, perhaps the case is closed from the point of view of criminal justice," Shizue Takahashi, whose husband was killed in the subway attack, told reporters.

"(But) the damage done to the victims continues even after the executions. I find it very hard." </s> Tokyo – The leader of the Japanese doomsday cult that carried out a deadly 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway was executed on Friday 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.

"Seven Aum members were executed, they include Shoko Asahara," a justice ministry official told AFP.

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.

"I've been in pain for years," he told AFP.

"It will be impossible to ever forget the incident, but the execution brings a kind of closure."

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 first sign of it was a smell similar to paint thinner, but soon commuters began coughing uncontrollably, recalled Sakae Ito, who was on the crowded Hibiya line that day.

"Liquid was spread on the floor in the middle of the carriage, people were convulsing in their seats. One man was leaning against a pole, his shirt open, bodily fluids leaking out."

Police were first alerted just after 08:00 and panic soon set in, with subway workers screaming at people to evacuate and passengers convulsing on carriage floors.

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

Born Chizuo Matsumoto in 1955 on the southwestern island of Kyushu, Asahara changed his name in the 1980s, when the Aum cult was being developed.

Virtually blind, he was seen as a charismatic speaker who cloaked himself in mysticism to draw recruits including doctors and scientists to the doomsday cult he developed in the 1980s.

The Aum cult, now renamed Aleph, officially disowned Asahara in 2000, but it has never been banned and experts say the former guru retained a strong influence.

Despite the horror that persists over the Aum's subway attack and other crimes, some experts had warned against the execution of Asahara and his acolytes.

They fear his death may trigger the naming of a new cult leader, possibly his second son.

And the execution of Asahara's followers risks elevating them to "martyrs" in the eyes of remaining cult adherents, warned Taro Takimoto, a lawyer for relatives of cultists, in an interview with AFP earlier this year.

"We should have them talk until they die a natural death so that they help prevent a recurrence," he said.
Japan executes former Aum Shinrikyo leader Shoko Asahara and six other main members of Aum Shinrikyo, who led the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack, by hanging.