Word: asahara
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TOKYO: Japan came to a halt Wednesday as people across the country turned their attention to a Tokyo courtroom where the cult leader accused of masterminding last year's deadly subway nerve gas attack went on trial. Aum Shinrikyo cult leader Shoko Asahara did not enter a plea to charges he killed 11 people and injured more than 3,700 in last March's attack. Public interest in Japan's "trial of the century" is intense as more than 15,000 people lined up before dawn for a lottery awarding the 48 seats available to the public. Even though there...
...indictments continue to mount forAum leader Shoko Asahara.Police have now charged him with having a disciple strangled to death after the man attempted to escape the cult's Mt. Fuji compound. Police last week arrested Asahara's wife, who they suspect was also involved in the murder...
...Boeing 747 where an unidentified hijacker had held 365 hostages for fifteen hours. The hijacker was rapidly subdued, and only one woman was hurt in the attack. Officials initially said the hijacker was amember of the Aum Shinrikyocult and had threatened to blow up the plane ifcult leader Shoko Asahara was not immediately released, but those reports were later denied. It is not yet known whether the hijacker, who used an ice-pick in the attack, also had a bomb...
Police put together their picture of the group's plans from the interrogations of 34 senior cultists arrested since the subway attack. Asahara had long been predicting a 1997 world war in which the U.S.would try to take over Japan, and he was determined that the cult should survive it. By March 1994 that vision had altered dramatically. Asahara apparently had become interested less in surviving the war than in starting it, and for unexplained reasons he moved the timetable forward to 1995. He had funds -- a senior cult member admitted that Aum has assets of more than $1 billion...
...Asahara is expected to be indicted this week for murder and attempted murder. Police are also preparing to charge the guru on suspicion of ordering the first sarin-gas attack in June last year in Matsumoto, in central Japan, which killed seven and injured more than 200. Meanwhile, his wife Tomoko Matsumoto, 36, is in the process of taking control of the group, which has yet to see major defections. Fear may be a factor: reports say Aum members under arrest have confessed that a cement-grinding machine found at the cult's main commune was used to pulverize...