The long trial of Aum Shinrikyo founder Shoko Asahara ended Sept. 15 when the Supreme Court rejected a special appeal by lawyers for Asahara. The top court's decision affirmed the February 2004 ruling of the Tokyo District Court, which found the cult leader guilty of 13 criminal counts, the most serious being the sarin gas poisoning on March 20, 1995, of a Tokyo subway that killed 12 people and seriously injured 14 others. Now the death sentence handed down to the mastermind behind that deadly nerve-gas attack has been finalized.
But the court proceedings were irregular: In neither of the two appellate trial stages -- one before the Tokyo High Court and the other before the Supreme Court -- did the defendant attend the hearings held. This irregularity has been extremely frustrating for the public, which should have been able to hear the full story behind Asahara's crimes. It has deprived the public of the chance to understand the philosophy and thinking that drove Asahara to orchestrate indiscriminate killings as well as the circumstances, including the early years of his life, that led him to become a religious "guru" and eventually a mass murderer.
A total of 27 people died and 4,000 to 5,000 others were injured as a result of Asahara's 13 crimes. Besides the Tokyo sarin-gas attack, he is responsible for killing seven people and injuring four others in a sarin-gas attack in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, on June 27, 1994, and for killing a Yokohama lawyer and his wife and son on Nov. 4, 1989.