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)

The police swooped in two months after the subway attack, confiscated truckloads of weapons and drugs, rounded up dozens of cult leaders and pulled Asahara out of a concealed crawlspace.

He was charged with masterminding the gassing and involvement in 12 other crimes that killed 27 people. Eleven of his top lieutenants have been sentenced to hang, although none has yet been executed pending appeals. Three more remain at large.

But Asahara's legacy lives on.

The cult has renamed itself Aleph, and authorities say about 1,650 people in Japan and 300 in Russia continue to believe in Asahara's teachings. Aleph members reached at the cult's Tokyo headquarters refused to talk to the AP.

Life hasn't gone back to normal for Asahara's daughters.

Eleven years after the subway gassing, public anger remains so intense that Asahara's daughters still receive death threats. They rarely appear in public. Seen as a potential cult leader, the third daughter claims she is often tailed by plainclothes police. Court orders have been required to force towns to register them as residents.

His second and third daughters, now in their 20s, say they have recently broken their silence to plead for mercy for their father, saying they, like the rest of Japan, badly want to hear him explain himself. They are suing the Tokyo High Court and the state-appointed psychologist, claiming their father was denied a fair trial.

"If he committed these crimes, he must be punished," the younger one said. "But he has no more understanding of what is happening around him than a cat or a dog. To execute him now isn't justice."

Life hasn't gone on for Aum's victims, either.

After helping pull victims from a train at Kasumigaseki station, in the heart of Tokyo's government district, subway worker Kazumasa Takahashi, 50, got out a broom and a dustpan and started cleaning up a puddle of clear liquid _ later identified as sarin _ that had spilled from a plastic bag by the door of one of the cars.

Minutes later, he was dead. Far more might easily have died had the gas fumes spread more rapidly.

Takahashi's widow, Shizue, sat through more than half of the 260 sessions of Asahara's murder trial at the Tokyo District Court. She too was desperate to hear Asahara explain his actions, accept responsibility and apologize.

She has given up on that.

"In the beginning, I hoped that he would say something, but obviously, he was not facing the trial seriously, not reflecting on the crimes or thinking about the victims," she said. "This man is hopeless, and at this point I don't have to hear anything from him."