Nerve-Gas Guru Tests Japan Legal System

This undated file photo shows doomsday cult guru Shoko Asahara, who was sentenced to hang for trying to bring down Japan's government in an elaborate scheme culminating in a nerve-gas attack on Tokyo's subways that killed 12 people and sickened 5,000 on March 20, 1995. (AP Photo/ Kyodo News, File) (AP)

TOKYO -- When she was finally allowed to visit her father, she found him in a wheelchair, wearing a diaper. A prison guard took notes throughout the 30-minute encounter, which took place in a small, barren room, through a plate of thick, transparent plastic. It was, for her, a dream come true. But as a nightmare.

Sitting on the other side of the glass was Shoko Asahara. With his arrest and trial, the teenager had gone from obscurity to being the daughter of Japan's most hated man _ something like Osama bin Laden to Americans.

Asahara was sentenced to hang for trying to bring down Japan's government in an elaborate scheme to hasten Armageddon with a series of violent crimes culminating in a nerve-gas attack on Tokyo's subways that killed 12 people and sickened 5,000 more on March 20, 1995. His arrest was seen live on television as a phalanx of riot police marched on his Aum Shinrikyo cult's fortress at the base of Mount Fuji. The spectacle remains etched in Japanese memories.

The second and third of his four daughters spoke to The Associated Press about their prison visits but, fearing reprisals, insisted on anonymity. During the interview, the younger daughter wore a wig to disguise herself.

Japan's tough prisoner visitation rules were tightened even further to apply to Asahara's six children and other relatives. The daughters waited nine years for the chance to visit him. Virtually the only other prison visitors have been his lawyers, doctors and psychologists.

Authorities had their reasons: They feared Asahara might try to pass messages to followers, and the third daughter had been rumored as his cult successor. In the interview, she scoffed at that possibility, but didn't flat-out deny it.

But as the case against him progressed, Asahara's defense team was facing an increasingly serious problem _ they couldn't communicate with their client.

Shortly after his eight-year trial began, Asahara started to behave incoherently. He mumbled, chuckled, released outbursts of gibberish, then fell silent. Blind and virtually deaf, the man who portrayed himself as a messiah appeared to have lost his mind.

So, as they prepared an appeal after his conviction in 2004, his lawyers decided to push for visits with Asahara's daughters, hoping these would somehow bring him out of his shell.

The court agreed.

"Seeing our father again was the only thing that kept us going," the second daughter said in the interview. She had been warned he was in bad shape, but what she saw came as a shock. "I wanted to tell him and ask him so many things," she said. "But he just sat there grinning. It was unbearable."

Though 51, he looked old and frail. He didn't respond to anything she said, just mumbled and chuckled. During a later visit, he masturbated in front of her. She went into a deep depression, and was briefly hospitalized.