Free Republic

Shoko Asahara, founder of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo and mastermind behind the deadly 1995 nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway system — and a number of other horrific crimes in the 1980s and ’90s — was executed on Friday, Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa confirmed. She also confirmed that six other condemned Aum members — Tomomasa Nakagawa, 55, Kiyohide Hayakawa, 68, Yoshihiro Inoue, 48, Masami Tsuchiya, 53, Seiichi Endo, 58, and Tomomitsu Niimi, 54 — were also executed. In total, Asahara, 63, whose real name was Chizuo Matsumoto, was found guilty for his role in 13 crimes that led...

TOKYO (AFP) - Japan's Supreme Court condemned to death Shoko Asahara, founder of the doomsday cult that attacked the Tokyo subway with nerve gas in 1995, throwing out his final appeal. The bearded guru, who ordered Japan's worst ever terror attack which claimed 12 lives, was revered as a god by his sect, whose hardline followers are under constant surveillance. Asahara's lawyers argued that the 51-year-old former acupuncturist was mentally unfit and only mumbled nonsense in meetings. But Japan's top court refused a special motion by the defense seeking to resume his appeal trial, meaning Asahara could be hanged at...

Feb. 22, 2004 | TOKYO (AP) -- As guru of a doomsday cult, Shoko Asahara looked and sounded the part. Almost blind, his black beard flowing onto his chest, he claimed he could levitate, see into people's past lives and foretell the apocalypse. On Friday, a Japanese court will decide whether he also commanded his disciples to murder, most terrifyingly in the 1995 sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway that killed 12 people, sickened thousands and alerted the world to the threat of terrorism by mass slaughter. Asahara faces the gallows if convicted of masterminding the subway deaths...

Fears grow that extremists are ready to cross another threshold of terror Evidence gathered in Iraq and Afghanistan lends credence to claims that radical Islamic groups are dabbling in lethal toxins BEIRUT: A few days ago, Japanese prosecutors demanded the death sentence for the guru of the Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth) doomsday cult, Shoko Asahara, for masterminding the sarin gas attack on Tokyo’s subway system on March 20, 1995. Twelve people were killed and 2,500 sickened. A year earlier, sect activists had released sarin in a residential neighborhood in the Nagano Mountains, killing seven people. Those atrocities crossed a moral...