The Justice Ministry executed Thursday the remaining six Aum Supreme Truth cult executive members whose death sentences were finalized in relation to a series of cult-related incidents, including the 1995 fatal sarin nerve gas attacks on the Tokyo subway system. All 13 death-row inmates related to those crimes have now been executed as former cult leader and mastermind Chizuo Matsumoto, also known as Shoko Asahara, and six of his followers were executed on July 6.
The executions of Satoru Hashimoto, 51, Toru Toyoda, 50, and Kenichi Hirose, 54, were carried out in the Tokyo Detention House, while the executions of Kazuaki Okazaki (who later changed his last name to Miyamae), 57, and Masato Yokoyama, 54, were carried out in the Nagoya Detention House. Yasuo Hayashi (who later changed his last name to Koike) was executed in the Sendai Branch Detention House.
According to the final verdict, Matsumoto directed former Aum executives to murder lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto and his family in November 1989. His followers then released sarin nerve gas in the city of Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, killing seven people in June 1994, and in Tokyo subway trains in March 1995, killing another 12 people.
The six inmates executed Thursday were involved in at least one of the three crimes as a perpetrator, and their death sentences were finalized at the Supreme Court over the period from May 2005 to December 2009.
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