The Justice Ministry executed former Aum Supreme Truth cult leader Chizuo Matsumoto, also known as Shoko Asahara, on Friday morning in Tokyo.
Six of his followers who were senior members of the cult were also executed at four detention houses across Japan.
The cult committed heinous and indiscriminate terrorist attacks, including fatal sarin nerve gas attacks in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, in 1994 and on the Tokyo subway system in 1995, as well as the murder of lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto and his family in 1989. The series of crimes claimed 29 lives, with more than 6,500 injured.
The followers executed were Masami Tsuchiya, 53; Seiichi Endo, 58; Tomomitsu Niimi, 54; Yoshihiro Inoue, 48; Tomomasa Nakagawa, 55; and Kiyohide Hayakawa, 68.
According to the final verdict, Matsumoto, 63, directed senior executive cult members to kill the Sakamotos in November 1989.
Sarin nerve gas was then released in the city of Matsumoto, killing seven people in June 1994, and in Tokyo subway trains in March 1995, killing another 12 people. Aum was found to have committed 10 other incidents, including the kidnapping and imprisoning of Kiyoshi Kariya, the chief of the Meguro public notary office in Tokyo who was later killed, and the murder of a man using highly toxic VX gas.
Matsumoto was arrested in May 1995 and indicted on 17 criminal charges. His first trial was held in April 1996 at the Tokyo District Court, but the enormous volume of evidence and the number of witnesses prolonged the trial.
In February 2004, the district court sentenced Matsumoto to death, ruling that he masterminded all 13 of the above cases. In March 2006, the Tokyo High Court rejected his appeal without holding a public hearing because defense lawyers did not submit appeal documents by the deadline. His death sentence was finalized in September 2006.
A total of 192 suspects were indicted over the series of cases, with 190 convicted. Twelve of them, not including Matsumoto, who were involved in any of the three major incidents -- the Sakamotos' murder and the sarin attacks in Nagano and Tokyo -- had their death sentences finalized by the Supreme Court over a period from May 2005 to December 2011.
Minister cites 'agony' suffered by victims
Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa on Friday described a series of crimes by the Aum Supreme Truth cult as acts based on a "self-centered doctrine" at a press conference after Friday's executions of the group's leader and six followers. "They committed the crimes based on the interpretations of the self-centered doctrine [of the cult]," the minister said at the Justice Ministry.
"The agony and grief suffered by those whose lives were taken and their family members, as well as people who became disabled [as a result of the crimes committed by the cult] must be unimaginable," Kamikawa said.
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
