 |
Ex-member of Japan Doomsday Cult Gets Death Penalty
A former member of Japan's Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult was sentenced to death on Tuesday for murders carried out before the cult's fatal gas attack on a Tokyo subway in 1995.
Satoru Hashimoto, 33, was found guilty for the 1989 murder of an anti-Aum lawyer, and the lawyer's wife and baby, and also for a 1994 sarin gas attack on a central Japanese city that killed seven people and injured many, national broadcaster NHK said.
A judge at the Tokyo District Court said Hashimoto, a karate expert, deserved the maximum penalty as his crimes were unprecedentedly brutal, NHK said.
The ex-bodyguard for cult leader Shoko Asahara had also been charged with building a plant to produce sarin gas used in the attacks.
Last week, two Aum members were sentenced to death for murder and attempted murder for their roles in releasing sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subway incident that killed 12 and injured thousands.
Last month another key member of the cult, Yasuo Hayashi, 42 + dubbed a "murder machine" by the media for his crimes + was sentenced to death because, the judge said, he released the largest amount of poisonous sarin gas in the subway attack.
In This Section
|