overseas media on Falun Gong

TOKYO: A key member of Japan's doomsday cult, dubbed a "murder machine" by the media for his crimes, including taking part in the deadly 1995 gas attack on the Tokyo subway, was sentenced to death yesterday.

Tokyo District Court Judge Kiyoshi Kimura said former Aum Shinri Kyo, or Supreme Truth, cult member Yasuo Hayashi, 42, deserved the sentence because he released the largest amount of poisonous sarin gas in the attack, which claimed 12 lives and injured thousands.

Prosecutors charged that Hayashi was directly responsible for the deaths of eight people by carrying three plastic bags of the deadly gas onto a packed commuter train. He released the gas by puncturing the bags with the sharpened tip of an umbrella.

Hayashi was also charged with other crimes, including taking part in a separate gassing the previous year.

Hayashi was the second cult member to receive the death penalty. The other, Masato Yokoyama, has appealed. Media reports quoted Hayashi's lawyers as saying they would seek an appeal.

"This morning I prayed that he would get the death penalty. I am satisfied," NHK quoted a parent of one of his victims as saying after the ruling.

Hayashi had told the court that he believed he would be sentenced to death. "Whatever my motives may have been, I think I will get the death penalty," he told the court in February.

After the subway attack, Hayashi went on the run, living in hideouts across the country for about a year and a half before being arrested in one of the southern Okinawa islands.

While a fugitive, he took part in another gas attack - which failed - at a busy Tokyo train station, setting rumours swirling that the "murder machine" was set to commit more acts of violence.

Hayashi, who had travelled around the world in search of spiritual guidance, found it in the teachings of Aum founder Shoko Asahara, and joined the cult when he was 30.

But what he did in the cult was far from spiritual.