Japan hangs seven of doomsday cult

Tokyo, July 6

Japan executed on Friday the former leader of a doomsday cult and six other members of the group that carried out a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, which killed 13 people and injured at least 5,800 besides shattering the country’s myth of public safety.

The Aum Shinrikyo, or Aum Supreme Truth cult, which mixed Buddhist and Hindu meditation with apocalyptic teachings, staged a series of crimes, including simultaneous sarin gas attacks on subway trains in March 1995. Sarin, a nerve gas, was originally developed by the Nazis.

The images of bodies, many in business suits, sprawled across platforms stunned Japan, and triggered public safety steps such as the removal of non-transparent rubbish bins that remain in force to this day. Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa read out the names of the seven at a news conference and said what they had done was “extremely atrocious”. “These crimes ... plunged people not only in Japan but in other countries as well into deadly fear and shook society to its core,” he said.

Chizuo Matsumoto, the cult’s leader who went by the name Shoko Asahara, was the first to be hanged. Announcements of the other hangings followed through the morning. Family members of victims expressed relief. “It’s right that he was executed,” said Shizue Takahashi, whose husband was a subway worker who died after removing a package of sarin from a train. Executions are rare in Japan but surveys show most people support the death sentence. — Reuters

Sarin — the deadly nerve gas

• Inhaled or absorbed through the skin, the gas kills by crippling respiratory centre of the nervous system, paralysing the muscles around lungs
• Combination results in death by suffocation
• WHO says Sarin is 26 times more deadly than cyanide gas. Just a pinprick-sized droplet will kill a human
• It can contaminate food or water supplies
• Heavier than air, can linger in an area for up to 6 hrs

Symptoms 

• Nausea
• violent headaches
• blurred vision
• drooling
• muscle convulsions
• respiratory arrest
• loss of consciousness

Past cases

March 1988 Halabja, 

IRAQI Kurdistan 

• 5,000 died
• 65,000 injured

1994 Matsumoto, JAPAN

• 7 killed

March 1995 tokyo, JAPAN

• 13 killed
• 5,800 injured

He’s still a mystery

• Shoko Asahara founded Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth) in mid-1980s. It attracted youth disillusioned with modern materialistic life
• Half-blind, Asahara used a mix of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and yoga to draw followers. They took part in bizarre rituals: drinking his bath water, wearing electrical caps that synchronised their brain waves with Asahara’s