Japan cult leader's hanging closes chapter on shocking crime

The executions Friday of a doomsday cult leader and six of his followers closed a chapter on one of Japan's most shocking crimes, the poison gas attack on rush-hour commuters in Tokyo's subway that killed 13 people and sickened more than 6,000.

The attack in 1995 woke up a relatively safe country to the risk of urban terrorism. The ensuing raid on the cult's compound near Mount Fuji riveted Japan, as 2,000 police officers approached with a canary in a bird cage. Shoko Asahara, the bearded, self-proclaimed guru who had recruited scientists and others to his cult, was found two months later, hiding in a compartment in a building ceiling.

A staff of Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun distributes their extra edition reporting doomsday cult leader Shoko Asahara was executed, in Tokyo Friday, July 6, 2018. Asahara and six followers were executed Friday for their roles in a deadly 1995 gas attack on the Tokyo subways and other crimes, Japan's Justice Ministry said. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)

The executions of the 63-year-old Asahara and the six cult members were announced by the Justice Ministry after they had been hanged, as is the practice in Japan. Two major newspapers issued extra editions and handed them out at train stations.

"This gave me peace of mind," Kiyoe Iwata, who lost her daughter in the subway attack, told broadcaster NHK. "I have always been wondering why it had to be my daughter and why she had to be killed. Now, I can pay a visit to her grave and tell her of this."

The executions were a long time coming, but they were expected as the last trial in the case had been completed and some of the condemned convicts had been transferred to other prisons earlier this year. Six other cult members remain on death row.

The subway attack was the most notorious of the cult's crimes, which was blamed for 27 deaths in all. Named Aum Shinrikyo, or Supreme Truth, it amassed an arsenal of chemical, biological and conventional weapons to carry out Asahara's escalating criminal orders in anticipation of an apocalyptic showdown with the government.

Japan's justice minister, who approved the hangings Tuesday, said she doesn't take executions lightly but felt these were justified because of the unprecedented seriousness of the crimes the seven committed.

"The fear, pain and sorrow of the victims, survivors and their families — because of the heinous cult crimes — must have been so severe, and that is beyond my imagination," Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa told a news conference.

She said the crime affected not only Japan but also sowed fear abroad.

TV screens at an electrical appliance store show the image of doomsday cult leader Shoko Asahara in news reports, in Urayasu, near Tokyo, Friday, July 6, 2018. Asahara and six followers were executed Friday for their roles in a deadly 1995 gas attack on the Tokyo subways and other crimes, Japan’s Justice Ministry said. (Kyodo News via AP)

The seven executions in one day were the most since Japan began releasing information on executions in 1998. They were hanged in detention centers in Tokyo and three other places, spread out so the executions could be done at once.

Japan hangs several people in an average year but keeps the executions highly secretive. The country started disclosing the names of the executed and their locations only 11 years ago. Those executed learn their fate only when they are taken to the gallows. There are 117 convicts on death row.

Six of the seven, including Asahara, had been implicated in the subway attack. They included three scientists who led the production of the sarin gas and a man who drove a getaway vehicle.

Their other crimes include the 1989 murders of an anti-Aum lawyer and his wife and 1-year-old baby and a 1994 sarin attack in the city of Matsumoto in central Japan, which killed seven people and injured more than 140. An eighth person died after being in a coma for a decade.

On March 20, 1995, cult members used umbrellas to puncture plastic bags, releasing sarin nerve gas inside subway cars just as their trains approached the Kasumigaseki station, Japan's Capitol Hill, during the morning rush. Commuters poured out of subway stations in downtown Tokyo, and the streets were soon filled with troops in Hazmat suits and people being treated in first-aid tents set up outside.

FILE - This combination of file photos shows Aum Shinrikyo cult leader Shoko Asahara, from top left to right, his cult members, Tomomasa Nakagawa, Seiichi Endo, and Masami Tsuchiya. Other members from bottom left to right, Yoshihiro Inoue, Tomomitsu Nimi, and Kiyohide Hayakawa. Japan executed the leader and six followers of a doomsday cult Friday, July 6, 2018, for a series of deadly crimes including a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway that killed 13 people in 1995. (Kyodo News via AP, File)

The convicted also assaulted and murdered wayward followers and people who helped members leave the cult.

Asahara, whose original name was Chizuo Matsumoto, founded Aum Shinrikyo in 1984. The cult attracted many young people, including graduates of top universities.

During his eight-year trial, Asahara talked incoherently, occasionally babbling in broken English, and never acknowledged his responsibility or offered meaningful explanations.

He was on death row for about 14 years. His family has said he was a broken man, constantly wetting and soiling the floor of his prison cell and not communicating with his family or lawyers. They had requested his mental treatment a retrial.

Some survivors of the cult's crimes opposed the executions, saying they would end hopes for a fuller explanation of the crimes.

Shizue Takahashi, whose husband was a subway deputy station master who died in the attack, also expressed regret that six of Asahara's followers had been killed.

A staff of Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun distributes their extra edition reporting that doomsday cult leader Shoko Asahara was executed, in Tokyo Friday, July 6, 2018. Asahara and six followers were executed Friday for their roles in a deadly 1995 gas attack on the Tokyo subways and other crimes, Japan's Justice Ministry said. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)

"I wanted the others to talk more about what they did as lessons for anti-terrorism measures in this country, and I wanted the authorities and experts to learn more from them," she told a televised news conference. "I regret that is no longer possible."

The cult claimed 10,000 members in Japan and 30,000 in Russia. It has disbanded, though nearly 2,000 people follow its rituals in three splinter groups, monitored by authorities.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said authorities are taking precautionary measures in case of any retaliation by his followers.

WASHINGTON (AP) — By blocking a Japanese company’s takeover of U.S. Steel, President Joe Biden said he was protecting good jobs in the American heartland. He may be putting them at risk instead.

In making its nearly $15 billion bid for the storied Pittsburgh-based steelmaker, Nippon Steel had promised to invest $2.7 billion in U.S. Steel’s aging blast furnace operations in Gary, Indiana, and Pennsylvania’s Mon Valley. It also vowed not to reduce production capacity in the United States over the next decade without first getting U.S. government approval.

“They were going to invest in the Valley,’’ said Jason Zugai, an operating technician and vice president of the United Steelworkers union local at a U.S. Steel plant in the Mon Valley. “They committed to 10 years of no layoffs. We won’t have those commitments from anybody.’’

Zugai and some other Mon Valley steelworkers supported the Nippon deal in defiance of the union’s national leadership, which pressured the Biden administration to kill it.

Losing the Nippon-U.S. Steel deal “will be a disaster for Pennsylvania,’’ said Gordon Johnson, who follows U.S. Steel stock on Wall Street as founder of GLJ Research. “I really don’t understand. This is not in the interest of the workers. It’s not in the interest of the shareholders of U.S. Steel.’’

On Friday, Biden said he was stopping the Nippon takeover — after federal regulators deadlocked on whether to approve it — because “a strong domestically owned and operated steel industry represents an essential national security priority. ... Without domestic steel production and domestic steel workers, our nation is less strong and less secure.’’

U.S. Steel stock dropped 6.5% on the news Friday.

The decision, announced less than three weeks before the president leaves the White House, reflects a growing bipartisan shift away from free trade and open investment.

President-elect Donald Trump had already come out against the Nippon takeover. “As President,” he wrote last month on his Truth Social platform, “I will block this deal from happening. Buyer Beware!!!”

In a joint statement, Nippon and U.S. Steel called Biden’s decision “a clear violation of due process and the law’’ and suggested they would sue to salvage their deal: “We are left with no choice but to take all appropriate action to protect our legal rights.’’

U.S. Steel was founded in 1901 in a merger that involved American business titans J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie and instantly created the largest company in the world. As the U.S. grew to world dominance in the 20th century, U.S. Steel grew with it. In 1943, at the height of the World War II manufacturing boom, U.S. Steel employed 340,000 people.

But foreign competition — from Japan in the 1970s and ‘80s and later from China — gradually eroded U.S. Steel’s position and forced it to close plants and lay off workers. The company now employs fewer than 22,000 in an industry dominated by the Chinese.

The U.S. government has sought over the years to protect U.S. Steel and other American steelmakers by imposing taxes on imported steel. During his first term, Trump slapped 25% tariffs on foreign steel, and Biden kept them or converted them into import quotas. Either way, the trade barriers kept the price of American steel artificially high, giving U.S. Steel and others a financial boost.

U.S. Steel is profitable and is sitting on $1.8 billion in cash, though that is down from $2.9 billion at the end of 2023.

United Steelworkers President David McCall declared Friday that U.S. Steel had the financial resources to go it alone. “It can easily remain a strong and resilient company,’’ he told reporters.

But U.S. Steel has said it needs the cash from Nippon Steel to keep investing in blast furnaces like the ones in Pennsylvania and Indiana.

“Without the Nippon Steel transaction, U. S. Steel will largely pivot away from its blast furnace facilities, putting thousands of good-paying union jobs at risk, negatively impacting numerous communities across the locations where its facilities exist,’’ U.S. Steel warned in September. The company also threatened to move its headquarters out of Pittsburgh.

On its own, U.S. Steel seems poised to focus on newer electric arc furnaces, such as its Big River plant in Arkansas, which can make high-quality steel products more efficiently and at lower prices compared to blast furnaces, said Josh Spoores, the Pennsylvania-based head of steel Americas analysis for commodity researcher CRU.

“I don’t know if they don’t have the will, but they seem to have seen that it’s a much better investment, a much better rate of return if they look to invest in an electric arc furnace rather than a blast furnace,” Spoores said. He noted that no steelmaker has built a blast furnace in North America for decades.

One possibility is that another company will step in and make a bid for U.S. Steel.

In 2023, arch-rival Cleveland-Cliffs offered to buy U.S. Steel for $7 billion. U.S. Steel turned the offer down and ended up accepting the nearly $15 billion all-cash offer from Nippon Steel, which is the deal that Biden nixed Friday. Perhaps, analysts say, Cleveland-Cliffs will try again.

In a statement, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro warned U.S. Steel management against “threatening the jobs and livelihoods of the Pennsylvanians who work at the Mon Valley Works and at U.S. Steel HQ and their families.’’

Shapiro also said companies that put in bids to buy U.S. Steel in the future must make the same commitments to “capital investment and protecting and growing Pennsylvania jobs that Nippon Steel placed on the table.’’

Marc Levy reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

FILE - The United States Steel logo is pictured outside the headquarters building in downtown Pittsburgh, April 26, 2010. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)