[Published: Friday July 06 2018]
Japan hangs doomsday cult members
TOKYO 6 Jul (ANA) - 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 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.(ANA)
FA/ANA/6 July 2018-------
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