Some cult members, who killed 13 people in a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, have been moved to new facilities 
 
 Japan is believed to be preparing to execute as many as 13 members of a doomsday cult in what could become the country’s biggest round of hangings in the past decade. 
 
 Tuesday marked the 23rd anniversary of Aum Shinrikyo’s sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway, which killed 13 people and caused illness among thousands of others. 
 
 Play Video 1:24 Shoko Asahara and the cult behind the Tokyo sarin attack – video explainer 
 
 Some of the members of the cult were transferred to detention facilities outside of Tokyo last week, fuelling local media speculation that their executions could be imminent. Japan normally doesn’t execute people until all accomplices’ cases have been finalised. That milestone was reached in January this year. 
 
 Japan: Shinzo Abe's political future in doubt as wife linked to cronyism scandal Read more 
 
 Japan executed 15 people throughout the course of 2008, the largest number to be sent to the gallows in a single year in recent history. 
 
 It is unclear whether the Aum Shinrikyo members would be put to death on the same day, but executions in Japan are routinely shrouded in secrecy until the final moments. In previous cases, inmates have spent years on death row only to be informed of their impending execution hours before being led to the gallows. Families are sometimes informed only after the hanging has taken place. 
 
 Amnesty International argued that if the government proceeded with the Aum Shinrikyo executions in coming months, it would be seen as a “cynical” attempt to get the news out of the way before the elevation of a new emperor next year and the Tokyo Summer Olympics in 2020. 
 
 “The mark of a civilised society is recognising the rights of every individual, even those responsible for heinous crimes,” said Amnesty east Asia researcher Hiroka Shoji. 
 
 “The death penalty can never deliver justice as it is the ultimate denial of human rights.” 
 
 Aum Shinrikyo was a violent cult that sought confrontation with the state as a prelude to the end of civilisation. On 20 March, 1995, members used umbrellas with sharp tips to puncture bags filled with liquid sarin in five train carriages during Tokyo’s morning rush hour. 
 
 Thirteen members were sentenced to death for a range of Aum-related crimes including the subway attack. Seven were transferred to a number of different detention facilities outside of Tokyo. Ringleader Shoko Asahara, 63, who is also subject to a death sentence, is yet to be moved. 
 
 The Japan Society for Cult Prevention and Recovery (JSCPR) has written to the justice minister calling for everyone but Asahara to have their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment. 
 
 “Asahara was the brain and the other 12 were merely the limbs,” said Taro Takimoto, a JSCPR board member who himself was a victim of a sarin attack by Aum Shinrikyo. 
 
 Japan was recently challenged about the death penalty in a United Nations human rights forum. Several countries called for the punishment’s abolition, or at least for a moratorium on executions being carried out. 
 
 But the Japanese government said sovereign countries should be allowed to make independent decisions. 
 
 “The majority of the Japanese people consider the death penalty to be unavoidable in the case of extremely heinous crimes and therefore Japan currently does not have any plans to establish a forum to discuss the death penalty system,” the government said in a formal reply. 
 
 Shizue Takahashi, 71, whose husband Kazumasa died in the subway attack, laid flowers at Kasumigaseki station in central Tokyo on Tuesday morning. Referring to the death row inmates, she told Kyodo News: “I hope they will be executed according to law and without making a fuss about it.” 

 Shizue Takahashi, the wife of a subway stationmaster who died in the sarin gas attack, prays during a moment of silence Tuesday at Kasumigaseki Station at 8 a.m., around the same time the terror attack occurred on March 20, 1995. 
 
 Japan on Tuesday marked the 23rd anniversary of a fatal nerve gas attack on Tokyo's subway. 
 
 About 20 Tokyo Metro staff at Kasumigaseki subway station on the Hibiya line held a moment of silence at 8 a.m. to remember two former colleagues who died in the attack. Memorial services were held at five other subway stations. 
 
 In all, 13 people died and 6,300 were sickened after the Aum Supreme Truth cult released sarin in five subway trains during co-ordinated rush-hour attacks on March 20, 1995. 
 
 Thirteen Aum members, including cult leader Shoko Asahara, remain on death row, while others are serving prison sentences. The last fugitive was arrested in 2012. 
 
 In what some believe was an attempt to divert the authorities that Asahara thought were closing in on his base in the foothills of Mount Fuji, he sent five teams of two people to attack the Tokyo subway. 
 
 Five adherents -- among them a senior medical doctor and several physicists -- dumped packages of sarin on busy trains, puncturing them with sharpened umbrella tips, before being driven away from a pre-determined station by their co-conspirators. 
 
 The nerve gas, so toxic that a single drop can kill a person, evaporated over the following minutes as thousands of unwitting commuters got on and off each train. 
 
 Staff and passengers were among the dead. Many of those sickened only realised what had happened as their symptoms worsened throughout the day and news broadcasts began piecing events together. 
 
 Aum was never officially disbanded. It went bankrupt because of the massive damage payments it was forced to make to victims of its crimes. 
 
 Former members have continued under different groupings with new names, such as Aleph. 
 
 © Japan Today
– Japan may be readying itself for a mass hanging. The Guardian reports that signs suggest the long-awaited executions of the doomsday cult members behind the infamous 1995 sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway may soon come to pass. The two big indications: It reports the country typically holds off on executing multiple people for one crime until all the cases are completed, which in this instance happened in January. Second, seven of the 13 members of Aum Shinrikyo who have been sentenced to death were last week moved to detention facilities outside of Tokyo, which spurred the local media buzz. The attack: The news comes on the 23rd anniversary of the March 20, 1995, attack, which killed 13 and sickened 6,300; 10 of the condemned were sentenced for this attack, the rest for other crimes. Japan Today reports the attack, for which other Aum members are serving prison sentences, involved bags containing liquid sarin being deposited on five trains and then punctured with pointed umbrella tips.