The last six death row prisoners of the Aum sect were executed

A page in Japanese history has turned, but not for families of the victims. Six ex-Aum Supreme Truth members, responsible for the sarin bombing of the Tokyo subway in 1995, were executed on Thursday morning, adding to the seven already hanged earlier this month, according to Japanese media reports. All 13 ex-Aum sect members who were sentenced to death several years ago were executed, including guru Shoko Asahara (whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto), executed earlier this month.

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In addition to the attack on the Tokyo subway At rush hour on the morning of March 20, 1995, members of the sect were also convicted of another sarin gas attack in Matsumoto in 1994, and the murder of a lawyer, his wife, and his wife. their baby in 1989. The crimes caused the death of 29 people and 6,500 wounded. Some 190 other members of Aum had also been sentenced to various sentences.

"Even if they were executed, my son will never come back"

The first capital punishment for the 1995 bombing was pronounced in September 1999. In December 1999, the Aum sect, which welcomed up to 10,000 worshipers, officially recognized its responsibility for the Tokyo metro bombing for the first time. Shoko Asahara had his sentence confirmed in 2006 and waited until July 6.

Three weeks ago, during the previous series of executions of the faithful of this sect the justice minister 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 no longer never occur. "

The families and relatives of the cult's victims had mixed feelings after these two waves of executions, apparently carried out according to the rank of the convicts in Aum. "Even if they were executed, my son will never come back," Kyodo Yoko Ito, whose son was killed in the Matsumoto attack, told Kyodo. "I want the police to watch the other sects closely so that this kind of tragedy does not happen again. Fusae Kobayashi, whose son was killed in the sarin gas attack, said his grief was not relieved by the news of the execution.

According to polls, the Japanese are overwhelmingly supportive to the death penalty

The lawyer Masaki Kito considers for his part that the execution of the guru and his followers does not end an attack where many areas of shadow remain. "It is unfortunate that they were executed without speaking more." Some fear that the hanging of Asahara will make him a martyr. "There are fears 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 attacks by Aum were unjustifiable and the officials deserve to be punished. However, the death penalty is never the answer, "commented Hiroka Shoji, East Asia researcher at Amnesty International. The organization has long lamented that Japan continues to practice the death penalty "by saying that executions are inevitable because the public demands it," polls showing that the public supports this type of sentence.