Over the course of Aum Shinrikyo founder Shoko Asahara's eight-year criminal trial, Tokyo prosecutors have portrayed him as a religious charlatan who used his teachings only to feed his lust for power and fame.
In their May 1996 statement at the start of his trial, prosecutors claimed Asahara ordered the heinous crimes of terror for which he is accused based on a twisted doctrine that, in his reckoning, justified murder.
When they demanded the death penalty last April, they likened him to the "ugliest" face of greed who made his followers commit crimes in the name of religion to satisfy his aims.