Japan cult widow speaks 30 years after subway attack

OSAKA: Only seven years into her marriage did Yuki Niimi first touch her husband — at a morgue where she collected his body atfter he was executed, and kissed him in a coffin.

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Before that a glass screen had always separated her from her death-row spouse Tomomitsu Niimi, a notorious member of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult that 30 years ago orchestrated a nerve agent attack on Japan's capital.

On March 20, 1995, Aum members released sarin on five Tokyo subway trains, killing 14 people and sickening thousands more.

“Until the very end, he gave no apology to those who died. He didn't regret what he did. He just followed the path he believed in,” Yuki, 47, told reporters in an interview. Yuki herself is a former member of an Aum successor group who despite her denials was once convicted for using intimidation to try to recruit an acquaintance for the sect.