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Former Aumist guru Shoko Asahara and 6 other ex-members of this dark Japanese organization, all sentenced to death for their responsibility in the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in March 1995 were executed on Friday morning, the government announced.
Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa confirmed at a press conference the hanging of Shoko Asahara (whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto), the founder and Guru of the group, and his followers Tomomasa Nakagawa, Tomomitsu Niimi, Kiyohide Hayakawa, Yoshihiro Inoue, Seiichi Endo and Masami Tsuchiya
Guru Asahara "perpetrated crimes for years," insisted the minister and the other six "have played a major role in many crimes by following Asahara's orders."
Kamikawa said she had "taken the careful decision to sign the execution order" from these seven convicts, saying that "acts of such gravity "unprecedented in Japan, must never happen again."
This is the first time that ex-members of the Aum Supreme Truth cult have been executed. The probability that he would be quickly taken to the gallows had been strengthened lately with the displacement of several of them. Six other faithful sentenced to the same death sentence remain on hold.
Shoko Asahara had his sentence confirmed in 2006 and had been waiting on death row since then along with 12 accomplices involved in various crimes, including Sarin attack that killed 13 people and poisoned 6.300 others. Aum is responsible in total for the deaths of 29 people and 6,500 wounded.
Some 190 other members of the sect were also sentenced to various sentences.
On March 20, 1995, according to a very thoughtful process, several members of the occult organization Aum Supreme Truth, created by Shoko Asahara, poured sarin gas into subway trains converging on the administrative heart of the capital.
– 23 years of waiting –
No one immediately understood this which was happening at this early hour, during the peak period, while many pbadengers were leaving suffocating various metro mouths lines referred.
Sometime before, during a kind of repetition of the effects of this gas , seven people were killed in the central city of Matsumoto, and 600 others had suffered various, sometimes definitive, ills.
In December 1999, the Aum sect, which hosted i up to 10,000 faithful, officially recognized for the first time its responsibility in the attack on the Tokyo metro and that of Matsumoto.
The first capital punishment for the 1995 bombing was pronounced in September 1999.
On Friday, family members of the victims reacted:
"It took 23 years since the bombing to have this punishment is executed, unfortunately, the parents of my husband, killed in the attack, died before, "lamented to the press Shizue Takahashi, the wife of a subway employee killed in the attack and president of a Association of Victims
Japanese law specifies that death row inmates must be executed within six months of the confirmation of their sentence, but in practice they often remain on death row for years. [19659002] – Oblivion impossible –
"When I heard the news of the executions, I remained calm, saying to myself + this case is over +", testified for AFP Atsushi Sakahara, a film director, a victim of the attack.
"I suffered for years … like the other victims, my body had all kinds of symptoms, I wish I could finish it completely, forget everything, but it's impossible," he lamented.
Others, like lawyer Masaki Kito, believe that the execution of the guru and the six of his followers does not end an attack where many areas of darkness remain. "It is unfortunate that they were executed without speaking further."
There are also fears that the hanging of Asahara might make him a martyr. "Fears exist that he is revered as a god, I think we must remain vigilant," warns Minoru Kariya, son of Kiyoshi Kariya kidnapped and killed by the Aum sect in 1995.
"The executions of seven are unprecedented in Japan's recent history, Aum's attacks were unjustifiable and those responsible deserve punishment, but the death penalty is never the answer ", commented Hiroka Shoji, researcher on East Asia in the human rights organization Amnesty International
The body has always lamented that Japan continues to practice the death penalty "saying that the executions are inevitable because the public demands it ", the polls indeed showing that the public supports this type of sentence.
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