This Date in History: Aum Shinrikyo

June 26, 2002: Tomomitsu Niimi, former "home affairs minister" for Aum Shinrikyo (Aum Supreme Truth) was sentenced to death by the Tokyo District Court. Niimi played a key role in the murder of anti-Aum lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto and his family in November 1989 and he organized the sarin gas attack in the town of Matsumoto in June 1994 that killed seven people and injured 144. Niimi was the eighth member of Aum to receive the death sentence for a series of crimes committed by the cult.