Tokyo - A former member of the Aum Supreme Truth cult was sentenced to life imprisonment by a Tokyo court on Wednesday for crimes including taking part in a deadly 1994 nerve-gas attack.
The Tokyo District Court sentenced Noboru Nakamura, 34, for murder, conspiracy to murder, attempted murder, and abduction leading to death, and illegally disposing of a body.
Prosecutors had demanded the death penalty.
Nakamura was found guilty of conspiring with Shoko Asahara, 46, AUM's founder and guru whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, over the sarin gas attack on June 27, 1994 in the city of Matsumoto.
The doomsday cult released the Nazi-invented Sarin gas in 1994 outside an apartment block housing judges in Matsumoto, central Japan.
The fumes killed seven people and temporarily affected 144 others, some seriously. It was an horrific curtain raiser to the infamous March 1995 gassing of Tokyo's subway by the same cult, which killed 12 people and injured thousands of other rush-hour passengers.
"The defendant's criminal responsibility is grave as the Matsumoto sarin case was institutionally carried out under the supervision of (Chizuo) Matsumoto, which is anti-social and vicious," said presiding judge Toshio Nagai. "The defendant has not expressed any remorse directly to the victims' families," he added in passing sentence.
Nakamura was also convicted of the abduction and killing of Kyoshi Kariya, the 68-year old brother of an AUM follower in 1995 and conspiracy to kill a 27-year-old AUM member in 1994, and of helping to build the cult's sarin production plant. - Sapa-AFP