UN Former Aum Shinrikyo leader executed - Also, six other perpetrators of 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack

UPDATE (7/25/201: LAST SIX EXECUTED

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20180706_13/

Sources say the leader of a doomsday cult that carried out the deadly subway attack in Tokyo in 1995 has been executed.

Shoko Asahara whose real name was Chizuo Matsumoto had been on death row for more than a decade after being convicted of murder and other crimes.

Matsumoto was 63 years old.He founded what was to later become known as Aum Shinrikyo around 1984.
Matsumoto urged his followers to prepare for the end of the world.

The cult released sarin gas on the Tokyo subway system in March 1995 killing 13 people and injuring more than 6000.

Matsumoto was found two months later in a hidden room inside a cult facility.

Matsumoto insisted he did not instruct his followers to carry out the attacks. But during his 2004 sentencing the Tokyo District Court said he deserved ultimate condemnation as the mastermind. His death sentence was finalized in 2006.

Criminal trials of Aum Shinrikyo members dragged through Japanese courts for more than 20 years. Almost 200 people were indicted. 13 were sentenced to death.

A court-appointed psychiatrist who met Matsumoto in 2006 reported he maintained relative silence and needed support for bathing and other activities.
Sources say that for the past several years, Matsumoto refused to meet his family members or lawyers.

https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20180706_21/

Sources say the former leader of the Aum Shinrikyo cult that carried out the 1995 sarin attack on Tokyo subways and other crimes has been executed, along with 6 of his former disciples.

They say Shoko Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, was executed at the Tokyo detention house on Friday. He was 63.

They say the 6 others executed on the same day are Yoshihiro Inoue, aged 48; Kiyohide Hayakawa, 68; Tomomasa Nakagawa, 55; Seiichi Endo, 58; Masami Tsuchiya, 53; and Tomomitsu Niimi, 54.

 

[RomanesEuntDomus]

If crazy doomsday-cultists could pick one up like a box of crackers, and then just 'test' it in an uninhabited area so easily, why didn't they buy another and go full Akira IRL? The fact they were in the area was likely one of history's coincidences.

Just imagine what that little tidbit did to their mental state. A cult of complete lunacy, hiding in the outback suddenly getting slammed by what amounts to the fist of an angry god...

 

[Smaug's Smokey Hole]

Japanese culture just seems perfect for cults. Heck, half the corporations over there are cults.



Japan's legal system is incredibly dysfunctional. The police have tonnes of power and little oversight and can basically interrogate you forever until you confess to whatever you're accused of. Doesn't help that the culture is a collective one that pushes people to submit to authority and conform.

Reminds me of an Enson Inoue anecdote. He was busted with 16 grams of weed in his car in Tokyo and a lot of police showed up to help with the arrest even though he had admitted to it and accepted being arrested on the spot. At the police station they started interrogating him - who did he buy it from? Who does he know that smokes weed? - really trying to bust this weed case wide open.

But he knows how the police work in Japan and how they rarely follow up on anything regarding foreigners, often because they might have been visitors and already left the country and all kinds of other reasons.
So Enson, not wanting to give up any of his friends(he's a Yakuza-friendly guy) scrambled to come up with the supplier/owner of the weed so he told them he got it from an exchange student from Guam named Tony. On the third day of questioning they suddenly asked what Tony's last name was and Enson's answer was "uh, uh, Montana". The police wrote it down.

So Tony Montana from Guam was the real culprit and Enson spent 28 days in jail instead of a maximum of five years.

 

[CWCchange]

Apparently, the remaining members have now been executed.