Doomsday cult leader Shoko Asahara was sentenced to death after being found guilty of plotting the deadly 1995 Tokyo subway nerve-gas attack and a series of crimes which claimed 27 lives.
Asahara, the founder of the Aum Supreme Truth sect, showed no emotion as Tokyo District Court condemned him to hang for "vicious and merciless" crimes at the end of a marathon eight-year trial.
"The accused is sentenced to death," presiding judge Shoji Ogawa said Friday after finding the 48-year-old guilty on 13 counts including murder for ordering the sarin gas attack nine years ago that killed 12 people and injured more than 5,000.
Dressed in a shapeless black sweatshirt and trousers with his greying hair and beard cut short, Asahara was also convicted of murder for an earlier attack using the Nazi-invented sarin which killed seven people in Matsumoto, central Japan.
Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, was also found guilty of ordering the deaths of an anti-cult lawyer and his family and cult members, and the attempted murder of others.
"The accused tried to become the king of Japan by forming Aum Supreme Truth and arming it. The accused killed or murdered people inside and outside the religious group who blocked his plot. He deserves extreme condemnation," Ogawa said at the end of a ruling which took four hours to read.
"His crimes did not stop at the murder of specific individuals but expanded into indiscriminate acts of terrorism," he said.
"His actions were cruel and vicious and merciless... He used religion to hide behind. The impact of the crimes on Japan and other countries and human society was very serious. He didn't listen to the voice of his victims."
Asahara's lawyers immediately lodged an appeal with the High Court.
"The verdict does not conform with reality," chief defence lawyer Osamu Watanabe said. "Facts concerning motives, purposes and plots were too weak. How can we argue with such weak facts?"
"Today's verdict is out of the question."
Members of the cult, which was founded in 1984, had testified that the offences were committed under Asahara's orders. The cult has acknowledged responsibility for the crimes and apologised.
Immediately after the verdict, the sect, now renamed Aleph, issued a statement accepting the ruling.
"We again deeply apologise for the victims and their families. We will forever take this verdict to heart, and will further work to compensate the victims," it said.
The judges rejected defence arguments that other cult members -- 11 of whom are appealing death penalties -- had acted on their own initiative and that Asahara was not responsible.
Ogawa said Asahara came up with the plan for the subway attack to thwart a planned police raid on the cult.
Shizue Takahashi, 57, whose husband Kazumasa died in the subway attack, was in court for the verdict and said she was glad Asahara got the death penalty she had long sought.
But for some ordinary Japanese, even the death penalty was not enough.
"In the old days, a person could be dragged through the streets and killed slowly as a result of many blows, and that would be the most fitting punishment for him," said Kuniko Watanabe, 68.
More than 4,650 people had turned up to try to get one of the few dozen seats reserved for the public at the hearing, prompting police to deploy an extra 400 officers in the capital and for security to be stepped up on the subway network.
Asahara was brought to the court by bus in a convoy of police vehicles, with a decoy convoy used to confuse potential attackers.
The charismatic cult leader has been in custody since being arrested two months after the 1995 attack at Aum's ramshackle headquarters in Kamikuishiki in the foothills of Mount Fuji, where the sect had built a chemical plant capable of producing enough sarin to kill millions of people.
The appeal against Asahara's death sentence means the case is likely to be completed for many years. Japan often keeps condemned prisoners on death row for 10 years or more before executing them.