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Japan on Friday executed the former leader of an apocalyptic cult and six other group members who perpetrated a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, killing 13 people and breaking the myth of public security.
The Aum Shinrikyo, or Aum Supreme Truth worship, which mixed Buddhist and Hindu meditation with apocalyptic teachings, staged a series of crimes including simultaneous attacks of sarin gas in the metro at rush hours in March 1995 The Nervous Gas
Body images, often in business suit, spread over subway platforms stunned Japan and triggered public safety measures such as the removal of non-hazardous bins. transparencies that remain in effect today. Fighters in protective gear approach Kasumigaseki Metro Station following a sarin gas attack by Aum Shinrikyo cult in Tokyo on March 20, 1995. (Jiji Press / AFP / Getty Images)
] As well as the Minister of Justice, Yoko Kamikawa, read the names of the seven people at a press conference and said what they had done was "extremely atrocious".
"These attacks have injured at least 5,800 people. The crimes have plunged people not only in Japan, but also in other countries, in mortal fear and shaken society, "said Kamikawa
This combination of photos shows, from left to right, the cult leader Aum Shinrikyo Asahara and her cult members Tomomasa Nakagawa, Seiichi Endo, and Masami Tsuchiya. Other members from left to right, Yoshihiro Inoue, Tomomitsu Nimi and Kiyohide Hayakawa. All were executed on Friday, July 6, 2018. (Kyodo News via Associated Press)
Chizuo Matsumoto, the leader of the sect who called Shoko Asahara, was the first to be hanged, according to media
Relatives of victims express relief
"I think it's just that he was executed," said Shizue Takahashi, whose husband was a subway worker who died after removing a package of sarin from a train.
"My husband's parents and my parents are already dead," said silver-haired Takahashi. "I think they would find it regrettable that they could not hear the news of this execution."
Executions are rare in Japan but investigations show that most people support the death penalty.
Police Leave Aum Shinrikyo's Compound In On March 28, 1995, the small village of Kamikuishiki, at the foot of Mount Fuji, attacked Japan's sense of public safety through the cult of sarin. (Kimimasa Mayama / Reuters)
"The death penalty can never give that result because it is the ultimate denial of human rights," said Hiroka Shoji, researcher of the group for East Asia, in a statement
. The group of citizens calling for the abolition of the death penalty declared that it was "a mbadive execution that goes against the global trend
] ".
Some Japanese worried about revenge
"I applauded when I learned that he had been killed, but I'm worried that his former supporters may deify him and do something, we must remain on our guard. " user user Chie.
Rituals and Weird Weapons
Asahara, 63, a plump and partially blind yoga instructor, was convicted in 2004 of thirteen charges, including subway bombings and other crimes that killed at least one person. dozen people.
He pleaded not guilty and never testified, but muttered and made inconsistent remarks in court during the eight years of his trial. The sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2006.
In all, 13 members of sects were sentenced to death for more than 20 years of trial, which ended in January 2018.
Asahara, founder of Aum 1987, said that the United States would attack Japan and turn it into a nuclear wasteland. He also said that he had traveled forward until 2006 and had then spoken to the people of the Third World War
Aum Shinrikyo's disciples were singing in front of a portrait of Guru Shoko Asahara on July 19, 1999, at the Aum office in Adachi. Tokyo. The worship activities in various parts of Japan have caused anxiety years after the sarin gas attack. (Reuters)
At its peak, the cult had at least 10,000 members in Japan and abroad.
Some members lived in an Asahara communal-type complex at the foot of Mount Fuji, where the group studied their teachings, performed bizarre rituals, and badembled an arsenal of weapons – including sarin.
The cult also used sarin in 1994, releasing gas in the central city of Matsumoto during a summer night, in an attempt to kill three judges ready to judge him.
This attack, which implied that a refrigerated truck was releasing the gas that was to be dispersed by the wind through a neighborhood, did not succeed in killing the judges, but killed eight other people and in injured hundreds.
