A Japanese appeals court has sentenced the former intelligence chief of the Aum Supreme Truth cult to death for abetting the deadly 1995 gas attack on Tokyo's subway, scrapping a life sentence imposed by a lower court.
The Tokyo High Court handed down a sentence of capital punishment on Yoshihiro Inoue, 34, who escaped the gallows in the initial ruling on the grounds that he had not been in the train to release the deadly gas and regretted his actions.
His lawyers immediately filed an appeal with the Supreme Court.
In June 2000, the Tokyo District Court sentenced Inoue to life in prison sentence on 10 counts of murder, including the Sarin nerve gas attack which killed 12 people and injured thousands.
Sparing him from the gallows, the judge told Inoue: "Spend your days in repentance by not escaping into religion."
Prosecutors, who had demanded the death penalty, appealed.
They argued he commanded the doomsday cult squad which released the Nazi-invented Sarin gas into Tokyo subway trains during the morning rush-hour on March 20, 1995.
Inoue admitted his involvement in all 10 cases, but said he only assisted the subway attack by "carrying messages to the commando group," not by actually releasing the gas.
In December 1995, he issued a message from his prison cell urging diehard followers to forsake the sect's founder, Shoko Asahara, because his teachings "resemble the truth but actually are not."
Asahara, 49, was sentenced to death in February for masterminding the subway massacre to avenge a police crackdown on his cult and ordering many other crimes.