overseas media on Falun Gong

TOKYO: A former member of Japan's Aum Supreme Truth cult was sentenced to death yesterday 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, court officials said.

Tokyo District Court sentenced the sect follower to death, which is carried out in Japan by hanging.

Dressed in a navy suit, Hashimoto bowed to the judge, sat and closed his eyes to hear the ruling. On hearing the death sentence, the condemned man opened his eyes and looked upwards.

A judge at the Tokyo District Court said Hashimoto, a karate expert, deserved the maximum penalty as his crimes were unprecedentedly brutal, Japanese media reported.

Prosecution witnesses said Hashimoto and other cult members crept into the home of the lawyer, Tsutsumi Sakamoto, as his family slept and injected them with lethal doses of potassium chloride and strangled them.

Sakamoto, one of Aum's most vocal opponents, had been investigating cult activities ahead of the subway attack.

In 1998, Kazuaki Okazaki, another former senior Aum member, was also sentenced to death for the murder of the Sakamoto family - the first death sentence meted out to an Aum member.

Hashimoto, an ex-bodyguard for cult leader Shoko Asahara, was also been charged with building a plant to produce sarin gas used in the attacks.

Last week, two other 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,was sentenced to death because, the judge said, he released the largest amount of poisonous sarin gas in the subway attack.