TOKYO - A former leader of the doomsday cult that carried out a nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 was sentenced to death Friday, court officials said, making him the tenth member of the group given the death penalty for the attack.
Seiichi Endo, 42, was sentenced to die for helping produce the deadly sarin gas used by Aum Shinri Kyo in the March 1995 attack, which killed 12 people and sickened thousands, said Tokyo District Court official Emi Shimoyama.
Endo was also found guilty of helping make sarin used in a June 1994 attack on a quiet residential area in the central Japanese city of Matsumoto that killed seven people.
Prosecutors said Endo deserved the death penalty because he knew his handiwork would be turned on innocent people, possibly killing them.
So far, prosecutors have requested death sentences for 11 cult members. With Friday's verdict, 10 have been sentenced to die, but some of those sentences are on appeal and none has been carried out.
Aum guru Shoko Asahara is still being tried for allegedly masterminding the subway gas attack and other killings.
Endo joined Aum in 1987, when he was a graduate student of virology at Kyoto University, one of Japan's most prestigious schools. In addition to nerve gas, the cult was developing biological weapons and vowed to topple the government to set off a chain of events that would lead to Armageddon.
After the nerve gas attack led to the arrest of all its top leaders, the cult was declared bankrupt in March 1996. But it has since regrouped under a new name, Aleph, and is believed to have more than 1,000 members.
Police say the cult's membership includes 650 hardcore followers who have cut family and social ties and live at cult facilities. More than half the current members are believed to have joined after the subway attack.
The group is under surveillance by Japan's Public Safety Agency, which has warned that it remains a threat.
Executions in Japan are carried out by hanging.