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.</s>TOKYO >> The execution of Japanese doomsday cult leader Shoko Asahara leaves unanswered questions about Aum Shinrikyo, which carried out the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway that killed 13 people and sickened 6,000.

TOKYO >> The execution of Japanese doomsday cult leader Shoko Asahara leaves unanswered questions about Aum Shinrikyo, which carried out the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway that killed 13 people and sickened 6,000.

Japanese government spokesman Yoshihide Suga confirmed that Asahara was executed Friday. The authorities said six other cult members were hanged.

Born Chizuo Matsumoto in 1955, Asahara founded Aum Shinrikyo, or Supreme Truth, in the mid-1980s. It attracted young people disillusioned with the modern materialistic way of life.

Half-blind, with a shaggy hair and beard, Asahara was the key figure in the stunningly random and lethal attack targeting Tokyo commuters.

He used a mixture of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and yoga to draw followers. They took part in bizarre rituals, such as drinking his bathwater and wearing electrical caps they believed synchronized their brain waves with Asahara’s.

Asahara chose doctors, lawyers and scientists from Japan’s top universities as his top aides, making them ministers of his pseudo-government of the Aum empire. They worshipped him and carried out his orders.

The group used donations from followers and earnings from yoga classes and health food businesses to amass cash to buy land and equipment. They made and bought conventional weapons in and outside Japan, while the scientists he had recruited developed and manufactured sarin, VX and other deadly chemical and biological weapons.

During his trial, Asahara often used diapers and sat on a cushion intended to make his incontinence inconspicuous. He stopped communicating with his children and defense team.

A court-appointed psychiatrist suggested he might be faking insanity to avoid punishment. The initial death sentence in 2004 became final after his defense team could not file an appeal citing his mental state.

In a rare interview in 2006, two of Asahara’s four daughters told The Associated Press that never in dozens of visits to him in prison had they had a real conversation.

Asahara just sat and at times fidgeted or grunted. The daughters’ repeated petitions for retrials were refused. They said his condition might have worsened since the last being allowed to see him in 2008.

Yoshihiro Yasuda, Asahara’s main lawyer during his trial, said the last time he was allowed to see Asahara at the detention center was in 2006. After that, the Tokyo detention center rejected requests for meetings with Asahara more than 400 times, citing the absence of a reaction from Asahara.

Yasuda sought medical treatment for Asahara and said in April 2018 that he had appealed for his release.

The reasons behind the sarin gas attack remain an enigma.

Cult members have said they believed Asahara’s prophesy that an apocalypse was coming and they alone would survive it.

Even before the attack, in 1989, lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto, who opposed the cult, his wife and baby boy were murdered by cult members.

Tomomasa Nakagawa, a doctor also executed Friday, and several other cultists broke into the Sakamotos’ apartment late at night, strangled them to death and buried them in the mountains.

Cult activities escalated after the defeat of Aum members in the 1990 parliamentary election. During their bizarre election campaign, Asahara and his top disciples sang and danced to the guru’s songs.

In June 1994, the cult spread sarin gas in Matsumoto in central Japan, killing eight people and injuring more than 140 others, in an attack targeting residents who were protesting the cult’s presence in their neighborhood and court officials handling their legal disputes.

Nakagawa and key members produced sarin at a cult compound and sprayed it from a van, in what was later regarded as an experiment for the subsequent subway gassing.

Under intensifying scrutiny from the government, the cult plotted the larger sarin attack on the subways in Tokyo on March 20, 1995.

Asahara guided the attack, according to testimony by his right-hand man, Yoshihiro Inoue, who also was executed Friday. Inoue headed Aum’s intelligence unit and was one of the few cult members who later turned against Asahara.

The five cultists who carried bags of sarin onto the trains targeted three subway lines converging at Kasumigaseki, Japan’s government and political center similar equivalent to Washington’s Capitol Hill.

The horrifying scenes in the aftermath of the attack shocked a country where the crime rate is relatively low and people tend to take their personal safety for granted.

The investigation into the attack uncovered more doomsday preparations, weapons arsenals and multiple killings by Aum.

Asahara was captured two months later, dragged out of a hidden compartment in a ceiling where he had holed up to evade arrest.

In 2004, he was convicted of having killed 27 people in 13 murders and other assaults and kidnappings spanning six years that culminated in the subway attack in his elaborate scheme to hasten Armageddon that he threatened.</s>Shoko Asahara, the leader of the Japanese doomsday cult that carried out a deadly 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system, was executed by hanging Friday along with six of his followers.

Asahara, the visually impaired, heavyset self-styled guru of Aum Shinrikyo, was sentenced to death in 2004 in part for directing Japan's deadliest terrorist attack — a complex plot that came to fruition on March 20, 1995 when cult members boarded five separate trains during morning rush hour and released the nerve agent, killing 13 commuters and sickening some 6,000 others.

The death of Asahara appeared to draw the curtain on the cult's shocking crimes, which included not only the 1995 subway attack but also a similar, smaller sarin attack the previous year along with other attacks using the deadly chemical VX.

Asahara was convicted of taking part in 13 crimes that led to the deaths of 27 people, which later became 29, according to The Japan Times.

Asahara, born as Chizuo Matsumoto, founded the group that became Aum Shinrikyo, or Supreme Truth, in 1984.

According to The Associated Press, the cult leader "used a mixture of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and yoga to draw followers. They took part in bizarre rituals, such as drinking his bathwater and wearing electrical caps they believed synchronized their brain waves with Asahara's."

Aum Shinrikyo attracted young, well-educated adherents, including scientists, some of whom then helped produce the poisons used in the cult's attacks. The group has since splintered and went on under the name Aleph.

Friday's executions provided closure for family members of those killed, such as Kiyoe Iwata, whose daughter died in the subway attack.

"This gave me a peace of mind," Iwata told Japanese broadcaster NHK, according to the AP. "I have always been wondering why it had to be my daughter and why she had to be killed. Now, I can pay a visit to her grave and tell her of this."

In Asahara's eight-year trial, he spoke incoherently and never explained the motive for the attacks or acknowledged responsibility.

As a result, The Japan Times notes that the cult leader's death "leaves several critical questions unanswered, because even during his trial, Asahara never explained the actual motivations for the crimes."

Some family members of the cult's victims are more interested in those answers than they are in retribution.

"I wanted the others to talk more about what they did as lessons for anti-terrorism measures in this country, and I wanted the authorities and experts to learn more from them," Shizue Takahashi, whose husband was a subway deputy station master and died in the attack, reportedly told a news conference.

"I regret that is no longer possible," she said.

Other cult members hanged on Friday included scientists who helped produce the sarin in an Aum laboratory, the cult's "intelligence" director, a member responsible for capturing potential cult defectors, and the cult's director for acquiring land.

Six other cult members reportedly remain on death row.</s>TOKYO (Reuters) – 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, killing 13 people and 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 during rush hour 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.

As well as killing the 13, the attack injured at least 5,800 people, some permanently.

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,” Kamikawa said.

Chizuo Matsumoto, the cult’s leader who went by the name Shoko Asahara, was the first to be hanged, media said as it broke into regular programming to report the news.

Announcements of the other hangings followed through the morning.

“I think 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.

“My husband’s parents and my parents are already dead,” the silver-haired Takahashi added. “I think they would find it regrettable that they could not have heard the news of this execution.”

Executions are rare in Japan but surveys show most people support the death sentence.

Rights group Amnesty International said justice demanded accountability but also respect for civil rights.

“The death penalty can never deliver this as it is the ultimate denial of human rights,” Hiroka Shoji, the group’s East Asia Researcher, said in a statement.

BIZARRE RITUALS AND WEAPONS

 

 Asahara, 63, a pudgy, partially blind yoga instructor, was sentenced to hang in 2004 on 13 charges, including the subway gas attacks and other crimes that killed at least a dozen people.

He pleaded not guilty and never testified, but muttered and made incoherent remarks in court during the eight years of his trial. The sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2006.

In all, 13 cult members were sentenced to death during more than 20 years of trials, which came to an end in January 2018.

 Asahara, who founded Aum in 1987, said that the United States would attack Japan and turn it into a nuclear wasteland. He also said he had traveled forward in time to 2006 and talked to people then about what World War Three had been like.

At its peak, the cult had at least 10,000 members in Japan and overseas, including graduates of some of Japan’s top universities.

Some members lived in a commune-like complex Asahara established at the foot of Mount Fuji, where the group studied his teachings, practiced bizarre rituals and gathered an arsenal of weapons – including sarin.

The cult also used sarin in 1994, releasing the gas in the central city of Matsumoto on a summer night in an attempt to kill three judges set to rule on it.

That attack, which involved a refrigerator truck releasing the gas to be dispersed by the wind through a neighborhood, failed to kill the judges but killed eight other people and injured hundreds.</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>Tokyo – The leader of the Japanese doomsday cult that carried out a deadly 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway was executed on Friday along with six of his followers, decades after the shocking crime.

Shoko Asahara, the charismatic, virtually-blind 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.

"Seven Aum members were executed, they include Shoko Asahara," a justice ministry official told AFP.

The hangings are the first executions in connection with the nerve agent attack, which killed 13 people and injured thousands more. A further six cult members remain on death row.

Some of those affected by the attack welcomed news of the executions.

"When I heard the news, I reacted calmly... But I did feel the world had become slightly brighter," said Atsushi Sakahara, a film director who was injured in the sarin attack at Tokyo's Roppongi station.

"I've been in pain for years," he told AFP.

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

The attack during the capital's notoriously crowded rush hour paralysed the Japanese capital, turning it into a virtual warzone.

Injured people began staggering out of the underground struggling for breath, with watering eyes as the attack unfolded.

Others keeled over, foaming at the mouth, with blood streaming from their noses.

The sarin had been released in liquid form on five subway carriages at different points throughout the network.

The first sign of it was a smell similar to paint thinner, but soon commuters began coughing uncontrollably, recalled Sakae Ito, who was on the crowded Hibiya line that day.

"Liquid was spread on the floor in the middle of the carriage, people were convulsing in their seats. One man was leaning against a pole, his shirt open, bodily fluids leaking out."

Police were first alerted just after 08:00 and panic soon set in, with subway workers screaming at people to evacuate and passengers convulsing on carriage floors.

The Japanese Self-Defence Force was called in and descended into the depths in hazmat suits and gas masks to assist the injured and deal with the poison.

Though concerns about the Aum had already been raised, the attack prompted a massive crackdown on the cult's headquarters and the arrest of Asahara and other group members.

He was sentenced to death after a lengthy prosecution during which he regularly delivered rambling and incoherent monologues in English and Japanese.

The hangings on Friday are the largest simultaneous execution in Japan since 1911, when 11 people were hanged for plotting to assassinate the emperor.

Born Chizuo Matsumoto in 1955 on the southwestern island of Kyushu, Asahara changed his name in the 1980s, when the Aum cult was being developed.

Virtually blind, he was seen as a charismatic speaker who cloaked himself in mysticism to draw recruits including doctors and scientists to the doomsday cult he developed in the 1980s.

The Aum cult, now renamed Aleph, officially disowned Asahara in 2000, but it has never been banned and experts say the former guru retained a strong influence.

Despite the horror that persists over the Aum's subway attack and other crimes, some experts had warned against the execution of Asahara and his acolytes.

They fear his death may trigger the naming of a new cult leader, possibly his second son.

And the execution of Asahara's followers risks elevating them to "martyrs" in the eyes of remaining cult adherents, warned Taro Takimoto, a lawyer for relatives of cultists, in an interview with AFP earlier this year.

"We should have them talk until they die a natural death so that they help prevent a recurrence," he said.</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>Asahara claimed to have achieved enlightenment in Himalayas, preached mix of Eastern religions combined with own apocalyptic prophecies.

There have been fears that Asahara's execution could usher in a replacement "guru." (Photo: AFP)

Tokyo: Shoko Asahara, executed Friday for his role in the deadly 1995 sarin attack on Tokyo's subway, used a mixture of charisma and mysticism to lure followers to his Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult.

The "guru" with his wild hair and unkempt beard, once led up to 10,000 followers, including some who in 1995 targeted the Tokyo subway in a shocking chemical attack that killed 13 people and injured thousands more.

The attack brought international infamy to the Aum group, which attracted a range of devotees, including the doctors and engineers who produced chemical agents for the group's crimes.

Despite humble beginnings and being nearly blind, Asahara was a charismatic speaker who attracted hordes of recruits to the cult he developed in the 1980s.

"Asahara was talented at brainwashing," said Kimiaki Nishida, a professor of social psychology at Rissho University in Tokyo.

He "lured young people, who felt a sense of emptiness in Japanese society," Nishida told AFP.

Asahara told followers that he would help them acquire "the power of God with the right kind of training" and they would "create a new world" after Armageddon, which he predicted would occur in 1997.

He was born Chizuo Matsumoto on March 2, 1955, one of nine children of an impoverished straw mat maker in Yatsushiro on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu.

He started calling himself Asahara in the 1980s, when the Aum cult was being developed.

He was admitted to a state boarding school for blind children when he was six, quickly earning a reputation for bullying classmates.

"For him, violence was like a hobby. Once he got angry, there was no way to stop it," a former classmate once said.

Asahara left school at 19 after qualifying as an acupuncturist.

His poor eyesight meant he was unable to pursue his first choice of medical school, and he failed to gain admission to study law at the University of Tokyo -- a traditional route into the nation's elite class.

In 1978, he married Tomoko, and the couple would go on to have four daughters and two sons.

Four years later, he had his first brush with the law, being arrested and fined for selling quack medicine out of his acupuncture practice east of Tokyo.

After the arrest, he became a recluse, reportedly travelling to India and reading religious books, before emerging as a yoga instructor two years later.

He claimed to have achieved enlightenment in the Himalayas and preached an esoteric mix of various Eastern religions combined with his own apocalyptic prophecies.

His followers claimed their guru, who dressed in Chinese-style pyjama tunics, had extra-sensory powers and could levitate for hours at a time.

In 1990, Asahara and a group of followers ran unsuccessfully for parliamentary election, and after the failed bid he became increasingly violent.

In June 1994, Aum members released sarin in the central Japanese city of Matsumoto at night, killing eight people, but the attack was not initially linked to the cult.

The group went on developing their chemical weapons, and on March 20, 1995 released sarin at several points across the Tokyo subway during the morning rush hour.

The attack shocked the world, and prompted a massive crackdown that saw Asahara and some of his followers arrested.

He was on death row for the attack and other crimes from 2006, after a lengthy prosecution during which he regularly delivered rambling and incoherent monologues in English and Japanese.

Twelve other Aum members were also sentenced to death over the 1995 attack and other crimes.

The Aum cult, now renamed Aleph, officially disowned Asahara in 2000, but experts believe his influence remains strong, with some members using pictures of him and recordings of his voice for meditation.

And there have been fears that Asahara's execution could usher in a replacement "guru."

"It would be no surprise if another Asahara emerges in the future," Nishida said.</s>The former leader of a doomsday cult that carried out a deadly nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 was executed on Friday, Japanese media reported. Six other cult members were also hanged.

Shoko Asahara was the leader of the Aum Shinrikyo or Aum Supreme Truth cult that was responsible for releasing sarin gas on five Tokyo subway trains during the rush hour in 1995, killing 13 people and poisoning more than 6,000 others.

He was sentenced to death in 2004, one of 13 cult members who ended up on death row and the first to be executed.

Asahara, 63, a partially blind former yoga instructor, believed that the United States would attack Japan with nuclear weapons, and that only cult members would survive World War III.

He mixed Buddhist and Hindu beliefs with apocalyptic Christian prophecies, declaring himself both to be Christ and the first enlightened being since Buddha. At its peak, Aum had tens of thousands of followers, mostly in Japan and Russia.

Sarin is a deadly nerve gas originally developed by the Nazis.

Aum members first released it in 1994 in the central Japanese city of Matsumoto, in a failed attack on three judges set to rule on the cult, nevertheless killing eight people and making hundreds ill. Cult members also staged several failed attempts to release hydrogen cyanide on subway trains following the 1995 attack.

But it was the Tokyo subway attack on March 20, 1995, and the images of rush-hour commuters lying dead or staggering from the effects of sarin, that shocked the nation and woke it up to the dangers of a cult that was based on a huge commune at the foot of Mount Fuji.

Asahara pleaded not guilty and never testified, only muttering and making incoherent remarks in court during the eight years of his trial, according to Reuters. The sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2006.

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news</s>Doomsday cult leader Shoko Asahara, the mastermind of a deadly sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, has been executed.

Doomsday cult leader Shoko Asahara, the mastermind of a deadly sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, has been executed.

Japanese government spokesman Yoshihide Suga confirmed that Asahara, leader of Aum Shinrikyo, was killed along with six other cult members.

Aum Shinrikyo were responsible for the 1995 attack which killed 13 and injured thousands, with the executions leaving unanswered questions about the group.

The reasons behind the sarin gas attack remain an enigma.

Cult members have said they believed Asahara’s prophesy that an apocalypse was coming and they alone would survive it.

In June 1994, the cult spread sarin gas in Matsumoto in central Japan, killing eight people and injuring more than 140 others, in an attack targeting residents who were protesting the cult’s presence in their neighbourhood and court officials handling their legal disputes.

Nakagawa and key members produced sarin at a cult compound and sprayed it from a van, in what was later regarded as an experiment for the subsequent subway gassing.

Under intensifying scrutiny from the government, the cult plotted the larger sarin attack on the subways in Tokyo on March 20, 1995.

Asahara guided the attack, according to testimony by his right-hand man, Yoshihiro Inoue, who also was executed on Friday. Inoue headed Aum’s intelligence unit and was one of the few cult members who later turned against Asahara.

The five cultists who carried bags of sarin onto the trains targeted three subway lines converging at Kasumigaseki, Japan’s government and political centre.

The horrifying scenes in the aftermath of the attack shocked a country where the crime rate is relatively low and people tend to take their personal safety for granted.

The investigation into the attack uncovered more doomsday preparations, weapons arsenals and multiple killings by Aum.

Asahara was captured two months later, dragged out of a hidden compartment in a ceiling where he had holed up to evade arrest.

In 2004, he was convicted of having killed 27 people in 13 murders and other assaults and kidnappings spanning six years that culminated in the subway attack in his elaborate scheme to hasten Armageddon that he threatened.

Born Chizuo Matsumoto in 1955, Asahara founded Aum Shinrikyo, or Supreme Truth, in the mid-1980s and it attracted young people disillusioned with the modern materialistic way of life.

With his shaggy hair and beard, the half-blind Asahara was the key figure in the stunningly random and lethal attack targeting Tokyo commuters.

He used a mixture of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and yoga to draw followers. They took part in bizarre rituals, such as drinking his bathwater and wearing electrical caps they believed synchronised their brain waves with Asahara’s.

Asahara chose doctors, lawyers and scientists from Japan’s top universities as his top aides, making them ministers of his pseudo-government of the Aum empire.

The group used donations from followers and earnings from yoga classes and health food businesses to amass cash to buy land and equipment.

They made and bought conventional weapons in and outside Japan, while the scientists he had recruited developed and manufactured sarin, VX and other deadly chemical and biological weapons.

The initial death sentence in 2004 became final after his defence team could not file an appeal citing his mental state.
Japan executes former Aum Shinrikyo leader Shoko Asahara and six other main members of Aum Shinrikyo, who led the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack, by hanging.