The Tokyo District Court sentenced former Aum Shinrikyo member Akemi Saito to 14 months in prison Tuesday for harboring fugitive cultist Makoto Hirata for more than 14 years.

Tokyo subway officials commemorated the 17th anniversary of Aum Shinrikyo’s deadly 1995 sarin gas attack Tuesday at Kasumigaseki Station.

It is one of the subway stations where members of the cult released the deadly nerve agent on March 20, 1995, killing 13 people and sickening more than 6,000 others.

A woman who harbored Aum Shinrikyo cult member Makoto Hirata for 17 years faces a two-year prison term.

Akemi Saito, herself a former member of the cult, pled guilty in court Tuesday to sheltering the former fugitive.

Prosecutors in Japan have indicted Makoto Hirata, a former senior member of the AUM Shinrikyo cult, on fresh charges of involvement in a blast at a Tokyo condominium and the throwing of a firebomb into the group’s Tokyo headquarters in 1995.

The attacks were staged in a bid to disrupt police investigations into the cult.

The Public Security Intelligence Agency in Japan on Friday inspected several properties of Hikari no Wa — a splinter group of the notorious Aum Shinrikyo cult.

Security officials believe the group is still under the influence of cult founder Shoko Asahara, who is on death row for a series of AUM crimes.

Former AUM Shinrikyo cult member Makoto Hirata, 46, arrested for kidnapping, will be served a fresh arrest warrant as early as Jan. 31 for alleged involvement in a 1995 bombing in Tokyo.

Meanwhile another former Aum Shinikyo cult member was charged with harboring Hirata while knowing he was a fugitive.

Japan’s public security authorities have received permission to extent surveillance of the Aum Shinrikyo cult — now called Aleph — and its offshoot Hikari No Wa.

A senior member of Aum Shinrikyo — the doomsday cult behind the 1995 nerve gas attack on Tokyo subways — has been charged in a kidnapping case, one of dozens of cult-related crimes in the 1990s.

Prosecutors charged Makoto Hirata with “unlawful capture” and confinement Friday in connection with the fatal abduction of a lawyer.

A former AUM Shinrikyo follower who turned herself in to Tokyo police early Tuesday was arrested later in the day on suspicion of harboring Makoto Hirata — a former senior member of the cult, who was apprehended on New Year’s Day after surrendering to the police.

Japanese investigators are set to question Aum Shinrikyo guru Shoko Asahara over the role Makoto Hirata, a former member of the cult who turned himself in to Tokyo Metropolitan Police on Dec. 31 after 17 years on the run, played in the abduction and death of a Tokyo notary office clerk in 1995, sources said Monday.

Tokyo police have questioned a former AUM Shinrikyo cult member as part of their investigation into a case involving another former leading member who turned himself in to police over the weekend after almost 17 years on the run.

Other convicted Aum members are being questioned as well.

Japanese police have admitted they turned away one of the nation’s most wanted fugitives when he tried to surrender on New Year’s Eve after nearly 17 years on the run.

An officer thought the man was playing a practical joke.

Aum Shinrikyo fugitive Makoto Hirata, who turned himself in to police late Saturday believes guru Shoko Asahara should hang for his crimes.

But one of the cult’s victims has called on the Japanese government to abandon the looming execution of the group’s leaders.

Makoto Hirata, a former leading member of the AUM Shinrikyo cult who has been on the run for more than 16 years, turned himself in to police late Saturday.

He conspired with several other members in kidnapping a notary official in 1995 and causing his death.

Yoshiyuki Kono, a victim of a sarin gas attack by the AUM Shinrikyo cult in 1994, has accepted an offer by an AUM splinter group to serve as one of its inspectors, he said Friday.

Four others, including a Shinto priest and an academic, have also been recruited as inspectors.