Japan has executed the death sentence of Shoko Asahara

The death sentence on Shoko Asahara, leader of the apocalyptic sect, who staged an attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 using sarin, a powerful nerve gas, was carried out Friday in Japan, killing 13 people. he has made more than six thousand sick. In addition to Asahara, the death sentences of six other people, who were still part of the Aum Shinrikyō ("Supreme Truth") sect, were executed. According to Japanese law, the executions took place in the detention centers of Tokyo and Matsumoto, where the seven members of Aum Shinrikyō were imprisoned.

Born in 1955 in the island of Kyushu in the southwest, Asahara (Chizuo Matsumoto) had begun gathering followers for his sect in the eighties, after the opening of the church. a yoga school. His cult brought together elements of Buddhism and Hinduism, with the addition of elements of Christianity and the occult. Asahara claimed that there would soon be an apocalypse, caused by a nuclear attack by the United States, and that only his sect could guarantee salvation and survival.

Very good at conditioning his interlocutors and conferring a religion, mysticism and meditation, Asahara has enormously developed the sect, which reached only 10,000 followers in Japan. Another 30,000 followed his teachings in Russia. In 1990, with twenty or so other members, Asahara attempted politics by running for election to the Upper House of the Japanese Parliament. The failed election – later established investigations – was probably one of the causes that led him to organize the terrorist attack, a kind of revenge.

At 8 pm on March 20, 1995 At rush hour when millions of people are traveling to the Tokyo subway to go to work, five members of Aum Shinrikyō climbed the subway trains carrying plastic bags containing liquid sarin and an umbrella that they had pointed pointed and honed. They punched the bag with the umbrella unobtrusively, releasing the poisonous substance, and quickly escaped to the outside of the subway. Thousands of people inhaled sarin and coughed, breathing hard and feeling sick. Some managed to escape and reach the subway exits, with foam to the mouth and bloody cough. In the minutes that followed, the security and defense forces intervened, with the rescue personnel, putting their own safety at risk because they did not know what had caused the discomfort between them. The pbadengers. In the end, there were 13 deaths and 6,000 people with more or less severe symptoms due to the effects of the nerve agent. This was the worst terrorist attack in Japan's recent history and had a serious impact on the perception of security in the country, unaccustomed to terrorist threats and more generally to crimes.

Asahara managed to escape arrest for two months. he was found in a space that he had made behind a wall in the sect complex near Mount Fuji. Later, it was discovered that the leader of Aum Shinrikyō was also responsible for another attack carried out in Matsumoto in 1994, still using sarin and which had caused the death of 8 people and the wound of 100 other.

Family members of people who died in both terrorist attacks positively commented on the execution of death sentences for Asahara and the other six members of the sect. Organizations against the death penalty, starting with Amnesty International, have instead criticized the decision as reminding that the killing of a person "does not lead to any justice". In Japan, death sentences are not very common: in 2016, 4 were executed, while in 2016 3.

Formally Aum Shinrikyō no longer exists and was banned, but around 2000 , it is practically back to exist with the new name Aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. His supporters say that they disobeyed Asahara and agreed to pay compensation to the families of those who died in the attacks. It is estimated that the sect has more than 1,600 followers in Japan and nearly 500 in Russia, with badets of about 7.5 million euros. The suspicion is that some followers continue to follow the teachings of Asahara. For this reason too, the headquarters of the Tokyo sect are constantly under surveillance