Word: aum
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Japanese officials are seeking to dissolve Japan's Aum Shinrikyo cult. Justice Minister Isao Maeda said he will ask a court to revoke the tax-exempt religious status of the group and ask that it be disbanded for engaging in "serious antisocial activities." Althoughguru Shoko Asahara and other top leaders remain behind barsfacing murder charges in theMar. 20 gas attack on Tokyo's subways, Aum members continue to chant prayers and hand out flyers on the street. Prosecutors are now seeking disciplinary action against Asahara's lawyer for smuggling out a tape-recorded message from the guru. The tapeinstructed members...
...press reports based on police leaks, Tsuchiya admitted he had concocted sarin just before the subway attack. He added that while only 10 liters were used in the Tokyo attack, he had made "several tens of liters" of sarin in a secret laboratory behind Satian No. 7, the huge Aum-owned factory compound also near Mount Fuji that had been the object of police searches in March. He destroyed the rest of the sarin, he claims, to remove evidence...
...Ikuo Hayashi, 48, Aum's chief medical official, who implicated Asahara. Hayashi, who was arrested for illegally confining an Aum member at one of the rural compounds, reportedly confessed he was among the 10 Aum operatives who had placed sarin on the trains. The order, he said, came specifically from Asahara. The third big catch was Yoshihiro Inoue, 25, who is suspected of organizing the attack. Police caught him in western Tokyo last week and discovered bombmaking explosives in his car, and maps and timetables for the city's subway system at his hideout...
...Aum investigation is far from closed, and many questions remain unanswered. Foremost is why Asahara allegedly ordered the attack. Police are also eager to know if Aum was behind last month's attempted assassination of Tokyo police chief Takaji Kunimatsu and the disappearance in 1989 of a lawyer who was investigating Aum, along with his wife and infant son. Asahara continues to insist he is innocent. Makoto Endo, a lawyer who has visited him in jail and who represents another arrested cult member, says Asahara is distraught because no attorney wants to take his case. When Endo refused because...
Nearly 400 police officers descended on Aum Shinrikyo's headquarters near Mount Fuji, capturing the cult's bearded leader, Shoko Asahara, after finding him hidden in a coffinlike secret chamber four hours after the raid began. He was arrested and held without bail on murder charges connected with the March 20 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. If convicted, he faces life imprisonment or death by hanging. Asahara denies ordering the attack, but key senior cult members have confessed to having produced sarin-and to having used it in the subway gassing...