Asahara was hanged on 6 July 2018, twenty-three years after the subway attack and twelve years after his death sentence was finalised. He never gave testimony that explained the crimes; by the time of his trial he was largely unresponsive in court, and whether that was illness or refusal was never resolved. His remains and the dispute between his family members over them became a further legal matter. What his image and recordings now mean inside Aleph is the single fact on which the group and the state give flatly opposed accounts, and it is the fact the observation regime turns on.