TOKYO, Nov 6 (AFP) - A Japanese court rejected Friday the final appeals of two senior members of the doomsday cult behind the 1995 deadly sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, effectively putting them on death row.

The Supreme Court's presiding judge Yukio Takeuchi rejected pleas by Toru Toyoda, 41, and Kenichi Hirose, 45, upholding previous verdicts by two lower courts that handed both the death sentence, Jiji Press reported.

The two men were accused of colluding with Aum Supreme Truth sect leader Shoko Asahara to orchestrate the nerve gas attack which killed 12 people and injured thousands, according to Jiji.

Toyoda and Hirose, who were engineers at prestigious Japanese universities, were prominent members responsible for spreading the sect's teachings. Toyoda is also accused of participating in two separate attacks in the capital.

Defence lawyers had argued the men had been brainwashed by the cult.

The latest court decision brings the total number of sect members on death row to eight, which includes Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto and who was sentenced in 2004 for the gas attack and other crimes.

The bearded guru was revered as a god by his sect, which preached a blend of Buddhist and Hindu dogma mixed with apocalyptic visions. He was obsessed with Nazi-invented sarin gas and paranoid his enemies would attack him with it.