On this date, July 6, 2019, the founder of Japanese doomsday cult, Aum Shinrikyo, Shoko Asahara, along with six other cult members, was executed by hanging in Japan.
Shoko Asahara | |||
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Born | Chizuo Matsumoto March 2, 1955 Yatsushiro, Kumamoto, Japan | ||
Died | July 6, 2018 (aged 63) | ||
Cause of death | Execution by hanging | ||
Occupation | Cult leader, founder of Aum Shinrikyo | ||
Criminal status | Executed | ||
Spouse(s) | Tomoko Matsumoto (took the name "Akari Matsumoto" after her release from prison)[1] | ||
Children | 12 | ||
Criminal charge | Murder, terrorism | ||
Penalty | |||
Date apprehended | 16 May 1995 | ||
Shoko Asahara(麻原彰晃Asahara Shōkō, March 2, 1955 – July 6, 2018), born Chizuo Matsumoto (松本智津夫Matsumoto Chizuo), was the founder of the Japanese doomsday-cultgroup Aum Shinrikyo. Asahara was convicted of masterminding the deadly 1995 sarin-gas attack on the Tokyo subway, and was also involved in several other crimes. He was sentenced to death in 2004. In May 2012, his execution was postponed due to further arrests of Aum Shinrikyo members. He was executed by hanging on July 6, 2018.
INTERNET SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoko_Asahara
Early life
Asahara was born on March 2, 1955 into a large, poor family of tatami-mat-makers in Japan's Kumamoto Prefecture. He had infantile glaucoma from birth, which made him lose all sight in his left eye and go partially blind in his right eye at a young age, and was thus enrolled in a school for the blind. Asahara was known to be a bully at the school, taking advantage of the other students by beating them and extorting money from them. He graduated in 1977 and turned to the study of acupunctureand traditional Chinese medicine, which were common careers for the blind in Japan. He married the following year and eventually fathered 12 children, the eldest of whom was born in 1978.
In 1981, Asahara was convicted of practicing pharmacy without a license and selling unregulated drugs, for which he was fined ¥200,000 (equivalent to about ¥245,000 in 2013).
Asahara's interest in religion reportedly started at this time. Having been recently married, he worked to support his large and growing family. He dedicated his free time to the study of various religious concepts, starting with Chinese astrology and Taoism.
Later, Asahara practiced western esotericism, yoga, meditation, esoteric Buddhism, and esoteric Christianity.
Aum Shinrikyo
In 1984, Asahara formed Aum Shinsen no Kai. He changed his name from Chizuo Matsumoto to Shoko Asahara and renamed his group Aum Shinrikyo in 1987. Asahara applied for government registration and, although authorities were initially reluctant, after an appeal, the Tokyo Metropolitan Governmenteventually granted it legal recognition as a religious corporation in 1989.
After this, a monastic order was established, and many lay followers joined. Asahara gained credibility by appearing on TV and on magazine covers. He gradually attained a following of believers and began being invited to lecture-meeting at universities. Asahara also wrote several religious books, including Beyond Life and Death, Declaring Myself the Christ, and Supreme Initiation.
The doctrine of Aum Shinrikyo is based on the Vajrayanascriptures, the Bible, and other texts. In 1992 Asahara published Declaring Myself the Christ, within which he declared himself Christ, Japan's only fully enlightened master, and identified with the Lamb of God.
His purported mission was to take others'sins upon himself, and he claimed he could transfer spiritual power to his followers. He saw dark conspiracies everywhere, promulgated by the Jews, the Freemasons, the Dutch, the British Royal Family, and rival Japanese religions.
He outlined a doomsday prophecy, which included a third World War, and described a final conflict culminating in a nuclear"Armageddon", borrowing the term from the Book of Revelation16:16.
Asahara often preached the necessity of Armageddon for "human relief". He eventually declared, "Put tantra Vajrayana into practice in accordance with the doctrines of Mahamudra," and he led a series of terrorist attacks using a secret organization hidden from ordinary believers.
Tokyo subway gas attack, and arrest
Main article: Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway
On March 20, 1995, members of Aum Shinrikyo attacked the Tokyo subway with the nerve agentsarin. Thirteen people died and thousands more suffered ill effects. After finding sufficient evidence, authorities accused Aum Shinrikyo of complicity in the attack, as well as in a number of smaller-scale incidents. Dozens of disciples were arrested, Aum's facilities were raided, and the court issued an order for Asahara's arrest.
On May 16, 1995, the police investigated the headquarters of Aum Shinrikyo. Asahara was discovered in a very small, isolated room in one of the facilities.
Wary of possible Aum military power, the First Airborne Brigade of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force was stationed nearby to support the police if needed.
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死刑日本 [PHOTO SOURCE: https://theme.udn.com/theme/story/6775/2582583] |
Accusations, trial and execution
Asahara faced 27 counts of murder in 13 separate indictments. The prosecution argued that Asahara gave orders to attack the Tokyo Subway in order to "overthrow the government and install himself in the position of Emperor of Japan".
Later, during the trial which took more than seven years to conclude, the prosecution forwarded an additional theory that the attacks were ordered to divert police attention away from Aum. The prosecution also accused Asahara of masterminding the Matsumoto incident and the Sakamoto family murder. According to Asahara's defense team, a group of senior followers initiated the atrocities and kept them a secret from Asahara.
During the trials, some of the disciples testified against Asahara, and he was found guilty on 13 of 17 charges, including the Sakamoto family murder; four charges were dropped. On February 27, 2004, he was sentenced to death by hanging. The trial was called the "trial of the century" by the Japanese media. Meanwhile, Asahara resigned from his position as the Aum Shinrikyo representative in an attempt to prevent the group from being forcefully dissolved by the state.
The defense appealedAsahara's sentencing on the grounds that he was mentally unfit, and psychiatric examinations were undertaken. During much of the trials, Asahara remained silent or only muttered to himself. However, he communicated with the staff at his detention facility, which convinced the examiner that Asahara was maintaining his silence out of free will. Owing to his lawyers' failure to submit the statement of reason for appeal, the Tokyo High Court decided on March 27, 2006, not to grant them leave to appeal. This decision was upheld by the Supreme Court of Japan on September 15, 2006.
Two re-trial appeals were declined by the appellate court. In June 2012, Asahara's execution was postponed due to arrests of several fugitive Aum Shinrikyo members.
Asahara was hanged on July 6, 2018, at the Tokyo Detention House, 23 years after the sarin gas attack, along with six other cult members. Relatives of victims said they approved of the execution.
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The members of Aum Shinrikyo who have been executed TOP LEFT TO RIGHT: Shoko Asahara, Tomomasa Nakagawa, Yoshihiro Inoue, Tomomitsu Niimi, Seiichi Endo ,Masami Tsuchiya and Kiyohide Hayakawa Japan death penalty – does Japan have capital punishment, what execution methods do they use and when were Aum Shinrikyo killed? Japan has executed the last members of the cult group Aum Shinrikyo responsible for the sarin attack on Tokyo's underground in 1995 https://www.facebook.com/VictimsFamiliesForTheDeathPenalty/posts/1656190981169528 https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6868031/japan-death-penalty-capital-punishment-method-aum-shinkrikyo/ BLOG POST: http://victimsfamiliesforthedeathpenalty.blogspot.com/2014/08/why-japan-still-has-death-penalty-in.html |
AUM Shinrikyo cult founder Asahara, 6 ex-followers executed at once
(Mainichi Japan)
TOKYO -- AUM Shinrikyo cult founder Shoko Asahara, 63, who orchestrated the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin gas attack and other murders, and six former members of the cult were executed on the morning of July 6, the Ministry of Justice announced.
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The executions came 11 years and 10 months after the Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling that sentenced the former AUM leader to death in September 2006 as the "mastermind" of the series of crimes by the cult, which sent shockwaves through Japanese society and carved a place in the history of Japan's Heisei era.
Along with Asahara, whose real name was Chizuo Matsumoto, 12 other former top members of AUM Shinrikyo were also sentenced to death. The six other members executed on the same day as Asahara were Kiyohide Hayakawa, 68, at the Fukuoka Detention Center; Yoshihiro Inoue, 48, and Tomomitsu Niimi, 54, at the Osaka Detention Center; Masami Tsuchiya, 53, at the Tokyo Detention Center; Tomomasa Nakagawa, 55, at the Hiroshima Detention Center; and Seiichi Endo, 58, also at the Tokyo Detention Center. The death sentences for the six were finalized between 2009 and 2011.
The latest executions bring the total number signed off by Minister of Justice Yoko Kamikawa to 10, including during her previous run in the same position from October 2014 to October 2015. In addition, seven death row inmates is the highest number ordered executed in a single day in Japan since executions resumed in the country in 1993.
Asahara was born in Yatsushiro, Kumamoto Prefecture, in 1955, and established the predecessor of AUM Shinrikyo, "AUM Shinsen no Kai" in 1984. The organization attracted believers through yoga and meditation classes that claimed to give practitioners special abilities. In 1987, the organization changed its name to AUM Shinrikyo and became an incorporated religious body in 1989.
In 1990, Asahara himself and other followers ran as candidates for the House of Representatives, but none of them were successfully elected to office. Trouble continued with members leaving the cult and the payment of expensive "offerings," attracting harsh criticism from the public.
After the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system, Metropolitan Police Department raided the cult's facility in the then village of Kamikuishiki in Yamanashi Prefecture, and arrested Asahara and other leaders of the cult, and subsequently indicted Asahara on murder and other charges in 17 cases. In order to speed up proceedings, the prosecution subsequently dropped relatively light charges against Asahara in four of these cases. The remaining 13 cases included the 1989 murder of anti-cult lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto and his family, and a 1994 sarin gas attack in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, in central Japan, which killed eight people. In total, 29 people died (27 confirmed by the court as victims) and over 6,500 people were injured.
When his trial began in the Tokyo District Court in 1996, Asahara asserted that he was almost completely innocent, claiming that it was his disciples who carried out the attacks. However, he was handed the death penalty 2004 on the grounds that "committing crimes that stole the lives of so many people based on fictitious fantasies is foolish and despicable and deserves maximum social condemnation," citing that Asahara had "planned to expand the power of the religious cult by arming it, and imagined taking over Japan in the name of salvation and installing himself as king."
A total of 13 former members were sentenced to death for their involvement in either the death of the Sakamoto family or the two sarin gas attacks, or a combination of the incidents. In addition, six received life sentences, 81 prison time, 87 suspended sentences and three were fined. Two former members were found not guilty.
Following the cult leader's sentencing, because his legal group "could not communicate" with Asahara, they missed the deadline for submitting paperwork to appeal the court's decision on the grounds that he was mentally unfit to stand trial. Because of this, the Tokyo High Court struck down an appeal in 2006. The Supreme Court also upheld the Tokyo High Court's ruling, and Asahara's death sentence was finalized the same year.
In 1995, the Tokyo District Court revoked the legal status of AUM Shinrikyo as an incorporated religious organization. In 2000, the group renamed itself Aleph, and a new group called "Hikari no wa" (The Circle of Rainbow Light) broke away in 2007.
The trials over incidents related to AUM Shinrikyo's activities came to an end in January 2018. In March, the Justice Ministry moved seven of the 13 death row inmates, excluding Asahara, from where they were being held in the Tokyo Detention Center in the capital's Katsushika Ward to five regional centers, and the details of the execution of their sentences and the timing started being considered.
INTERNET SOURCE: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20180706/p2a/00m/0na/003000c
See also
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- Aleph: the organization's official website, with an English section
- A Japan Times article about two documentary films on Aleph
- BBC profile of Asahara
- A, a documentary film about Asahara made in 1998 by Tatsuya Mori on IMDb
- A2, a follow-up documentary made in 2001, also by Mori on IMDb
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