Japanese cult leader sentenced to death

Asahara found guilty on all charges, sentenced to death
TOKYO, Feb. 27, Kyodo

Shoko Asahara, the founder of the AUM Shinrikyo cult, was sentenced to death Friday at the Tokyo District Court, which found him guilty on all 13 charges against him, including the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system.

Asahara, 48, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, was found guilty on charges including murder and attempted murder in the 13 criminal cases that resulted in the death of 27 people.

Presiding Judge Shoji Ogawa ruled that the defendant held great responsibility for ordering followers to commit the crimes, saying, ''We cannot help saying that the motivation and purpose of the crimes are too shameless and ridiculous, as he tried to control Japan under the name of salvation.''

''The victims who lost their lives were not to blame. The heartaches of the bereaved families are deep and profound,'' he said.

The defense team for Asahara immediately appealed the ruling to the Tokyo High Court.

Haruo Kasama, deputy chief prosecutor at the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors' Office said, ''I believe it is a matter of course for the defendant Matsumoto to be found guilty as the mastermind and given the death penalty for the series of AUM-related incidents which caused unprecedented sufferings and shocked society.''

Reflecting deep public interest in the case, 4,658 people lined up for the 38 seats open to the public in the Tokyo courtroom.

Asahara was the last of 189 people indicted in AUM-related crimes to be sentenced. Eleven senior AUM officials had also received the death penalty.

The 13 charges filed against the AUM guru include the murder of lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto, who had been helping people with complaints against the cult, and was murdered together with his wife, then 29, and their 1-year-old son on Nov. 4, 1989.

Asahara was also found guilty for ordering the sarin gas attack in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, in 1994 that killed seven people. The court said he ordered that attack in an attempt to murder a judge hearing an AUM-related case and with the intention of also murdering residents of the city.

In the Tokyo subway attack on March 20, 1995, 12 people were killed and more than 5,500 injured.

''The crimes were heinous and grievous offenses that we had never experienced,'' Judge Ogawa said.

The defense team had laid the blame on Asahara's followers in their closing arguments on Oct. 30 and 31, claiming they acted without his instructions.

Asahara stood in front of the witness stand in the court without moving when the death sentence was delivered.

The prosecutors and Asahara's defense lawyers clashed throughout the trial, which lasted seven years and 10 months because of the complexity of the case and the huge amount of testimony.

The focus of the trial in all 13 cases was whether Asahara ordered his followers to commit the crimes.

On April 24, 2003, the prosecutors demanded the death penalty for Asahara, calling his actions the most heinous in Japanese criminal history and labeling him the mastermind behind all the crimes attributed to AUM.

In particular, the prosecutors described the 1995 gassing as an indiscriminate mass killing he ordered in an attempt to obstruct impending police investigation.

For most of the trial, which began April 24, 1996, Asahara remained silent.

Ogawa criticized the silence, saying the defendant ''is trying to escape from reality, and we could not hear any apology to the victims and the bereaved families.''

''We cannot choose any penalty other than the death sentence,'' he said.

During the first hearing, he did not enter a plea. But a year later, he pleaded not guilty to all charges except one of attempted murder in a case involving a VX nerve gas attack.

The arguments in the trial, which the prosecutors sought to expedite by dropping four of 17 cases in October 2000, were finally wrapped up last October after 256 hearings.

Asahara will be represented in the appeals trial by Takeshi Matsui, a lawyer who represents his two daughters. All of the team's 12 state-appointed lawyers said they will not represent him in the appeals trial.

Following Asahara's arrest in May 1995, AUM tried to shed its crime-tainted image, and renamed itself Aleph in January 2000. The group has been under surveillance by the Justice Ministry's Public Security Investigation Agency since December 1999. According to the agency, Aleph currently has about 1,650 followers in Japan and about 300 believers in Russia.

Born in Kumamoto Prefecture in March 1955, Asahara was almost blind in his left eye and was weak-sighted in his right. He graduated from a prefectural school for the blind in Kumamoto in 1975 before getting married in 1977.

Asahara operated an acupuncture shop and a pharmacy in Chiba Prefecture before launching the cult's predecessor group in 1984 as AUM Shinsen no Kai. Its name changed to AUM Shinrikyo in July 1987, with its membership in Japan reaching 15,400 in March 1995, the month the Tokyo subway gas attack occurred.

Asahara told his followers he is the incarnation of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction and regeneration, and urged them to entrust themselves and their assets to Shiva and himself for their lifetime. He also punished disobedient believers, according to the prosecutors.

Since around April 1990, he started believing that all people are sinful and need to be killed to save their souls, according to the prosecutors.


Source: Kyodo News