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 Aum Shinrikyo’s sarin nerve attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 killed 13 people and caused illness among thousands of others 
 
 The former leader of the doomsday cult that carried out a fatal gas attack on the Tokyo subway in March 1995 was executed on Friday. Share this Twitter 
 
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 The executions are the first among the 13 people convicted and sentenced to death for their roles in the deadly 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway and other illegal activities. The death penalty can never deliver this as it is the ultimate denial of human rights.” 
 
 The seven people executed in the early hours of Friday morning were: Chizuo Matsumoto, Tomomasa Nakagawa, Tomomitsu Niimi, Kiyohide Hayakawa, Yoshihiro Inoue, Seiichi Endo and Masami Tsuchiya. “I think they would find it regrettable that they could not have heard the news of this execution.” 
 
 Kiyoe Iwata, whose daughter died in the attack, said the news had given her peace of mind.  The executions in Japan of seven members of the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo (Aum) on Friday, including the group’s “guru”, Chizuo Matsumoto, does not deliver justice, Amnesty International said. Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception regardless of the nature of the crime, the characteristics of the offender or the method used by the state to carry out the execution and has been campaigning for abolition of the death penalty for over 40 years. The death penalty can never deliver this as it is the ultimate denial of human rights." Photo shows a gate of a Tokyo detention center on July 6, 2018, where Shoko Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, was hanged for masterminding the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system. 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.
– Japan on Friday executed the leader of a doomsday cult and six of his followers, public broadcaster NHK reports, a mass hanging that had been rumored for months. Chizuo Matsumoto, also known as Shoko Asahara, was the head of Aum Shinrikyo, the group responsible for the 1995 sarin nerve gas attack on Tokyo subway lines that killed 13 and injured more than 6,000 as well as other murders and other nerve gas attacks, one of which killed eight. Thirteen members of the cult had been sentenced to death; six are still awaiting execution. Japan does not carry out executions until all associated cases have been closed, with no more appeals pending; that happened in January, the BBC reports. Matsumoto, 63, had been imprisoned 22 years; his case was finalized in 2006, CNN reports. Matsumoto founded Aum Shinrikyo in 1984, and at its peak in the 1990s the cult had more than 10,000 members in Japan and thousands more in other countries; a successor group still has 1,500 members in Japan. The group's scientists produced nerve gas at its commune at the foot of Mount Fuji as Matsumoto, who claimed to be a messiah, preached what the Guardian describes as "a bizarre mix of Buddhist and Hindu meditation along with Christian and apocalyptic teachings, yoga, and the occult." There were reports of brainwashing and abuse in the cult, and after the 1995 attack dozens of followers were rounded up in police raids. Per the Japan Times, Matsumoto never offered an explanation for the group's crimes. After the executions, Amnesty International released a statement condemning them; it called the mass hanging "unprecedented in recent memory in Japan" and said the death penalty "is the ultimate denial of human rights."