TOKYO — Japan on Thursday executed six more members of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo, the perpetrator of the deadly sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, public broadcaster NHK said.

All 13 members of the cult who were on death row have now been executed, after Shoko Asahara, the cult's former leader, Shoko Asahara, and six other members of the group were hanged on July 6.

The attack killed 13 people and injured hundreds more, shattering the nation's myth of public safety.

Aum Shinrikyo, or Aum Supreme Truth, mixed Buddhist and Hindu meditation with apocalyptic teachings. It staged a series of crimes, including simultaneous sarin gas attacks on subway trains during rush hour in March 1995. Sarin, a nerve gas, was originally developed by the Nazis. </s> TOKYO: Japan executed two more members of the doomsday cult group Aum Shinrikyo on Thursday that perpetrated the deadly sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, public broadcaster NHK said.

Chizuo Matsumoto, the cult's former leader who went by the name Shoko Asahara, and six other members of the group were executed on July 6.

There are four remaining members on death row.

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 during rush hour in March 1995. Sarin, a nerve gas, was originally developed by the Nazis. </s> TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan executed six more members of the doomsday cult group Aum Shinrikyo on Thursday that perpetrated the deadly sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995.

All 13 members of the cult that were on death row have now been executed, after Chizuo Matsumoto, the cult’s former leader who went by the name Shoko Asahara, and six other members of the group were hanged on July 6.

The attack killed 13 people and injured at least 5,800 people, some permanently, shattering the nation’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 during rush hour in March 1995. Sarin, a nerve gas, was originally developed by the Nazis.

“It was unprecedented level of extreme and serious crimes which must not happen again and terrified not only people in Japan but also foreign countries and shook the society,” Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa told a news conference. </s> Japan on Thursday executed the last members of the cult sentenced to death for their role in the fatal 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway, weeks after the group's leader was hanged.

The execution of the six Aum Shinrikyo members, years after they were put on death row, draws a line under the horrific attack which shocked the world and prompted national soul-searching over the group and its crimes.

"Today the state executed six people," Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa said at a press conference.

In all, 13 Aum members, including the cult's near-blind leader Shoko Asahara, were on death row for crimes including the 1995 sarin attack on Tokyo's subway.

Local media said authorities wanted the death sentences against the Aum members to be carried out before Japan's emperor abdicates next year, when a new imperial era will begin.

Since the Aum's crimes were committed during the Heisei era of the current emperor, authorities wanted the executions complete before the new era begins, local media reported.

Some of the Aum's victims said it would be hard to simply move on.

"With the 13 members executed, perhaps the case is closed from the point of view of criminal justice," Shizue Takahashi, whose husband was killed in the subway attack, told reporters.

"(But) the damage done to the victims continues even after the executions. I find it very hard." </s> TOKYO - Japan on Thursday executed the last members of the cult sentenced to death for their role in the fatal 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway, weeks after the group’s leader was hanged.

The execution of the six Aum Shinrikyo members, years after they were put on death row, draws a line under the horrific attack which shocked the world and prompted national soul-searching over the group and its crimes.

“Today the state executed six people,” Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa said at a press conference.

In all, 13 Aum members, including the cult’s near-blind leader Shoko Asahara, were on death row for crimes including the 1995 sarin attack on Tokyo’s subway.

Local media said authorities wanted the death sentences against the Aum members to be carried out before Japan’s emperor abdicates next year, when a new imperial era will begin.

Since the Aum’s crimes were committed during the Heisei era of the current emperor, authorities wanted the executions complete before the new era begins, local media reported.

Some of the Aum’s victims said it would be hard to simply move on.

“With the 13 members executed, perhaps the case is closed from the point of view of criminal justice,” Shizue Takahashi, whose husband was killed in the subway attack, told reporters.

“(But) the damage done to the victims continues even after the executions. I find it very hard.”

The Aum gained international infamy with the 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway during rush hour, which killed 13 people and injured thousands more.

Members of the group released the chemical in liquid form at five points throughout the subway network, and soon commuters began struggling to breathe, staggering from trains with their eyes watering. Others keeled over, foaming at the mouth, with blood streaming from their noses.

The attack plunged the capital into chaos, and prompted a crackdown on the cult’s headquarters in the foothills of Mount Fuji, where authorities discovered a plant capable of producing enough sarin to kill millions.

Aum members, including those executed this month, were also convicted of crimes including an additional sarin attack in the town of Matsumoto the year before the Tokyo attack, and the murder of an anti-cult lawyer and his family. Many of the group’s members remain in prison.

The 13 cult members spent years on death row as prosecutors investigated their crimes, and some activists opposed the executions, fearing the members would be elevated to the status of martyrs.

But victims of the group’s attacks welcomed the execution of Asahara and six other Aum members earlier this month.

One man who was injured in the subway sarin attack told AFP he felt “the world had become slightly brighter”.

Japan is one of the few developed nations to retain the death penalty, and public support for it remains high despite international criticism, including from rights group Amnesty International.

“The taking of a life in retribution is never the answer,” the group’s East Asia researcher Hiroka Shoji said in a statement Thursday.

But Kamikawa said it was “not appropriate under the current circumstances to abolish the death penalty.”

“I think we can’t avoid capital punishment for those who have committed extremely heinous crimes,” she said.

Asahara developed his cult in the 1980s, and at one point the wild-haired “guru” had at least 10,000 followers, including the doctors and engineers who produced the group’s chemical agents.

Despite the crackdown on the Aum, it was never formally banned.

It officially disowned Asahara in 2000 and renamed itself Aleph, but experts say the former guru retained a strong influence before his execution.

Asahara’s execution set off a battle among his surviving family members for his remains, with his wife and several children who are in successor cults to the Aum seeking to obtain them.

He was cremated days after his execution, and his youngest daughter, who has broken with the Aum’s successor cults, said she would receive his ashes, which will reportedly be scattered at sea to avoid creating a pilgrimage site for Asahara’s followers. </s> Japan executes sarin attack cult leader and six followers

 The leader of the Japanese doomsday cult that carried out a deadly 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway was executed today along with six of his followers, decades after the shocking crime. Shoko Asahara, leader of the Aum Shinrikyo sect, has been on death row for more than a decade over the attack, which shocked the world and prompted a massive crackdown on the cult. </s> Japan has executed the last six members of the doomsday cult that perpetrated the deadly sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995.

The six men were hanged Thursday morning, said Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa.

All 13 members of the group Aum Shinrikyo who were on death row have now been executed, after Chizuo Matsumoto, the cult's former leader who went by the name Shoko Asahara, and six others were hanged on July 6.

The attack killed 13 people and injured at least 5,800, shattering the nation'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 during rush hour in March 1995. Sarin, a nerve gas, was originally developed by the Nazis.

Kamikawa called it a terrorist attack that even terrified people overseas. She said at a news conference that the six executed Thursday had collaborated with Asahara and other cult members systematically to conduct an unprecedentedly heinous crime that should never be repeated.

The cult had claimed 10,000 members in Japan and 30,000 in Russia. It has disbanded, though nearly 2,000 people follow its rituals in three splinter groups, monitored by authorities. </s> The last six members of a Japanese doomsday cult have been executed for a series of crimes in the 1990s including a deadly sarin gas attack on Tokyo's subways that killed 13 people.

Thirteen members of the Aum Shinrikyo group had received death sentences.

The first seven, including leader Chizuo Matsumoto, who went by the name Shoko Asahara, were hanged about three weeks ago.

The cult, which envisioned overthrowing the government, amassed an arsenal of chemical, biological and conventional weapons in anticipation of an apocalyptic showdown.

Named Aum Shinrikyo, or Supreme Truth, was blamed for 27 deaths before authorities raided its compound near Mount Fuji in 1995 and captured Asahara nearly two months later.

The group's most notorious crime was the subway attack in 1995 that killed 13 and sickened 6,000 people and caused panic during the morning commute.

The attack woke a relatively safe country to the risk of urban terrorism.

Cult members used umbrellas to puncture plastic bags, releasing sarin, a deadly nerve agent, inside subway cars just as the trains approached the Kasumigaseki station, Japan's main government district.

Commuters poured out of stations, and the streets were soon filled with troops in Hazmat suits and people being treated outside.

In the lead up to the attacks, the cult even tried out their chemical weaponry in Australia at Banjawarn Station — a sheep station they owned in the remote Western Australia goldfields.

Following the Tokyo subway attack, a police investigation of the station found traces of sarin gas in the carcasses of 24 sheep in a remote part of the property and in the surrounding soil.

Four of the six executed on Thursday released sarin on the subway.

The two others were convicted in other crimes, including the 1989 murders of an anti-Aum lawyer and his wife and one-year-old baby and a 1994 sarin attack in the city of Matsumoto in central Japan, which killed seven people and injured more than 140.

An eighth victim in Matsumoto died after being in a coma for a decade.

In announcing the execution of the final six members, who were all on death row, Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa repeatedly said the executions were carried out after careful deliberation and in consideration of the fear, pain and sadness inflicted on many of the victims of the cult's crimes.

She said Japan was not ready to abolish the death penalty despite overseas pressure.

"The majority is of the opinion that for heinous crimes, executions are inevitable," Ms Kamikawa said.

"The fact that there has been no end to heinous crimes such as murders and murder robberies, we feel that it is inevitable that for the extremely reprehensible crimes we carry out these executions."

The executions were announced only after they had happened, as is the practice in Japan.

Asahara, the bearded, nearly blind, self-proclaimed guru recruited scientists and others to his cult, attracting people who were disillusioned with a modern, materialistic lifestyle.

During an eight-year trial, he talked incoherently, occasionally babbling in broken English, and never acknowledged his responsibility or offered meaningful explanations.

The cult once claimed 10,000 members in Japan and 30,000 in Russia.

It has disbanded, though nearly 2,000 people follow its rituals in three splinter groups, monitored by authorities. </s> TOKYO (Reuters) - The former leader of Aum, the Japanese doomsday cult that carried out a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, was executed on Friday, public broadcaster NHK reported.

Chizuo Matsumoto, who went by the name Shoko Asahara, was the first of 13 scheduled to be hanged for the attacks.

The Aum Shinri Kyo, 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 Tokyo subway trains during rush hour in March 1995. Sarin, a nerve gas, was originally developed by the Nazis.

The attacks left 13 dead and injured more than 6,000. </s> Image copyright AFP Image caption Shoko Asahara headed the Aum Shinrikyo cult

Seven members of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult which carried out a deadly chemical attack on the Tokyo underground in 1995 have been executed, including cult leader Shoko Asahara.

The Sarin attack, Japan's worst terror incident, killed 13 people and injured thousands more.

The executions took place at a Tokyo detention house on Friday morning.

Japan does not give prior notice of executions, but they were later confirmed by the justice ministry.

Shoko Asahara, 63, and his followers were also accused of several other murders and an earlier Sarin gas attack in 1994 which killed eight and left 600 injured.

Their execution, by hanging, had been postponed until all those convicted had completed their final appeals. That happened in January.

Another six members of the cult are still on death row.

Injured victims and the families of those killed have welcomed the executions.

"I reacted calmly... But I did feel the world had become slightly brighter," said Atsushi Sakahara, a film director who was caught in the attack.

"It will be impossible to ever forget the incident, but the execution brings a kind of closure."

What was the Tokyo attack?

On 20 March 1995, cult members released the Sarin on the subway in the Japanese capital. They left punctured bags filled with liquid nerve agent on train lines going through Tokyo's political district.

Witnesses described noticing the leaking packages and soon afterwards feeling stinging fumes hitting their eyes.

The toxin struck victims down in a matter of seconds, leaving them choking and vomiting, some blinded and paralysed. Thirteen people died.

Aum Shinrikyo, often shortened to Aum, believed that the end of the world was coming and that those outside the cult would go to hell - unless they were killed by cult members.

Cult leader Asahara styled the attack as a "holy attempt to elevate the doomed souls of this world to a higher spiritual stage", the Japan Times reports.

In the months after, members of the cult made several failed attempts to release hydrogen cyanide in various stations.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Witness: Tokyo attack

The attack shocked Japan, a country that prided itself on low crime rates and social cohesion.

Scores of Aum members have faced trial over the incident and 13 were sentenced to death, including Asahara.

Another six are serving life sentences.

What is the Aum Shinrikyo cult?

The cult, whose name means "supreme truth", began in the 1980s as a spiritual group mixing Hindu and Buddhist beliefs, later working in elements of apocalyptic Christian prophesies.

Shoko Asahara, also known as Chizuo Matsumoto, declared himself to be both Christ and the first "enlightened one" since Buddha.

Image copyright AFP Image caption Aum Shinrikyo is believed to still have thousands of followers

Aum Shinrikyo gained official status as a religious organisation in Japan in 1989 and picked up a sizeable global following. At its peak, Asahara had tens of thousands of followers worldwide.

The group gradually became a paranoid doomsday cult, convinced the world was about to end in a global war and that only they would survive.

The cult went underground after the 1995 attack, but did not disappear, eventually renaming itself Aleph or Hikari no Wa.

Aum Shinrikyo is designated a terrorist organisation in the US and many other countries, but Aleph and Hikari no Wa are both legal in Japan, although designated as "dangerous religions" subject to surveillance.

It still has followers both in Japan and also worldwide, in particular in some countries of the former Soviet Union.

In 2016, police in Russia conducted a number of raids on suspected cult members in Moscow and St Petersburg.

How has the execution gone down in Japan?

Shizue Takahashi, the widow of a subway worker killed in the attack, said she felt Asahara's execution was fitting.

"He of course deserves death," she told reporters. "The execution was processed as it should be... so no tears for me at all."

Japan has executed as many as eight people a year since an effective moratorium ended in 2010.

The death penalty is only used for serious cases of murder. Officials do not give advance public notice of executions, and those condemned usually learn they are scheduled to die just a few hours beforehand.
The six remaining cult members of Aum Shinrikyo who perpetrated the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack and were on death row are executed by hanging.