Former doomsday cult guru Shoko Asahara was convicted and sentenced to death yesterday for masterminding the deadly 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway and a string of other crimes that killed 27 people, shocked Japan and alerted the world to the danger of high-tech terrorism.
Asahara, founder of the apocalyptic Aum Shinrikyo cult, also was convicted of ordering his followers to produce and stockpile arsenals of conventional and chemical weapons, including the Sarin gas used in the subway attack.
Asahara stood in silence as the verdict -- guilty on all 13 counts against him -- and sentence were read. He is the 12th person sentenced to hang for the attacks, and the decision was widely expected.
The former cult leader's attorneys immediately appealed, arguing that prosecutors had ignored testimony showing Asahara was not behind the crimes, said lead defense lawyer Osamu Watanabe.
The move will set into motion further legal proceedings that some say could last another decade.
The ruling was the climax of a nearly eight-year-long trial. His attorneys had argued that Asahara -- whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto -- had lost control over his flock by the time of the March 20, 1995, subway attack that killed 12 and sickened thousands.
The prosecution, however, depended on testimony from former followers who said that Asahara had planned and ordered their murderous deeds.
Asahara also was convicted of masterminding a Sarin gas attack in June 1994 in the central city of Matsumoto, the murder of anti-Aum lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto and his family, and the killings of wayward followers and people helping mem-bers leave the cult.
At its height, Asahara claimed 10,000 followers in Japan and 30,000 in Russia. The guru used a mixture of Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and yoga to entice his devotees, who engaged in bizarre rituals such as drinking his blood and wearing electrical caps that they believed kept their brain waves in tune with their master.
The families of victims welcomed news that Asahara had been sentenced to the gallows.
"It was good to hear the death sentence that I had been hoping for," said Shizue Takahashi, widow of a train worker killed in the subway Sarin attack.
"I visited my husband's grave this morning and I came to hear the ruling with his spirit," she said.
Some said that they were saddened that Asahara never ac-knowledged his responsibility for the crimes or apologized to the victims. He grinned and made comic faces during the proceedings, but barely spoke, only occasionally babbling incoherently in broken English.
"This death sentence is not enough," said Yoko Ito, whose daughter was killed in the Matsumoto gas attack.
"I was hoping that he would say something, but it's very disappointing that the verdict ended in silence," Ito said.
The verdict came after several hours of proceedings in which judge Shoji Ogawa detailed the 13 counts against Asahara and dismissed the former guru's claims of innocence.
"The defendant plotted to spread Sarin nerve gas across Tokyo, destroy the capital and build his own kingdom, and he ordered the construction of a Sarin production plant," Ogawa said.
A four-judge panel led by Ogawa delivered the verdict and sentence.
Security was tight at Tokyo District Court to guard against disruptions by Asahara followers, and media reported that a decoy was used on the way to the court yesterday morning to thwart any attempt to free the ex-guru. Some 4,600 people turned out for a shot at the 38 courtroom seats available to the public; spectators were chosen by lottery.
"I can't think of any other sentence but death for Asahara," said Yasutomo Kusakai, a 22-year-old college student who tried unsuccessfully to get a courtroom seat.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
RSS