Word: aum
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...case was never solved, but it cast a shadow over the organization. Last February 68-year-old Kiyoshi Kariya tried to prevent his cult-member sister, a wealthy widow, from giving Aum the building in which his office was located. The sister disappeared, and shortly afterward an Aum member questioned Kariya on her whereabouts. On Feb. 28, four young men jumped out of a Mitsubishi van and grabbed him. He has not been seen since. When police found a similar van with traces of Kariya's blood in it and the fingerprints of sect members, they issued a warrant...
...then the cult had conceived a disquieting fascination with sarin. In 1991 Aum was involved in a land dispute in the city of Matsumoto. Last June the hearings had been completed, and a three-judge panel was about to rule; but three weeks before their decision was due, someone released a cloud of sarin, a substance more usually associated with national arsenals and weapons treaties, into the Matsumoto night. Seven people were killed and 200 injured; of the three judges, all of whom were sleeping in the affected area, all required treatment, and one was hospitalized. There has been...
Police named a suspect in the Matsumoto sarin case, but dismissed him; no one was ever charged. That did not comfort Aum's nervous neighbors in Kamikuishiki. A month later they noticed that the leaves on the trees near the cult's compound had suddenly turned brown. Shortly afterward the family living nearest the compound woke up with nausea and sore eyes. There was "a horrible smell, like burning plastic," said retired farmer Norie Okamoto, who informed the police. The cultists got off with a warning, and the villagers were furious, especially when the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper disclosed that police...
...offices and freed a student they claimed was being held there against his will. The raid had been a long time in the planning, both in order to assemble evidence and because the Japanese authorities are particularly sensitive to charges that they are persecuting religious groups. Nonetheless, concerns about Aum's possible connection with sarin and other sect-related tensions prompted them to act. In response, the cult's leaders had its lawyers file suit. And the next day, Japan is whispering, it did more...
Once the police uncovered Aum's huge stockpiles of lethal chemicals, several things changed. In addition to announcing publicly that Asahara is wanted for questioning about the subway poisoning, the traditionally reticent Japanese police revealed that they were entertaining 110 complaints against the cult for offenses including unlawful confinement, assault and theft. The charges seemed to embolden local authorities, who were reported in the press to be investigating a cult hospital in Tokyo's Nakano neighborhood and allegations of electronic bugging in Yamanashi. The Nagano prefectural police, acting on the soil samples that so perturbed the cult's neighbors, have...