Cult News

Chizuo Matsumoto, also known as “Shoko Asahara” led his followers to a day of reckoning, but it wasn’t the one he predicted, instead it was the beginning of the end for him and the cult he created called “Aum Supreme Truth.”

Asahara was sentenced to death in February 2004 for the poison gas attack he ordered in Tokyo, which claimed of lives of twelve people and injured 5,500. Including the murder of a lawyer and his family and other related crimes, 27 lives were lost in the wake of Matsumoto’s madness.

Japanese justice moves slowly and after 11 years and with all his appeals exhausted the cult leader may soon be executed by hanging on the gallows.

In the past decade Aum has disintegrated and splintered into factions as its founder, who was once regarded as divine, lapsed into silence. Today the man that once ruled the sect like a king languishes in a jail cell alone wearing diapers, apparently unwilling or unable to communicate or even use a toilet. 

One of the guru’s lieutenants also convicted of cult crimes and sentenced to death says that Matsumoto might remain a symbol to some of his remaining followers after his death.

“If Matsumoto is to be executed without testifying, he will become a martyr,” Kenichi Hirose, 41 wrote in a letter, reports Yomiuri Shimbun.   

“If Matsumoto is going to have his death sentence finalized without testifying, fails to atone for his actions and maintains a barrier of self-containment, I’ve nothing to say to him,” Hirose also said.

Throughout the years since his arrest the once talkative guru has been mute. He did not speak coherently during his court trial, though at times he has demonstrated the ability to masturbate in front of his jailers.

Regardless of whether Matsumoto is faking, or has unraveled without the power he once held, the murderous cult leader will not be protected by an insanity defense.

Tokyo High Court on Monday rejected an objection filed his lawyers and nothing remains between the heinous cult leader and the hangman.