Word: cult
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Since Japanese police arrested the guru of the Aum Shinrikyo cult on May 16, frightening facts have emerged indicating that Asahara had the money, the means and the intention to wreak his version of Armageddon on Japan. The March 20 nerve-gas attack on the Tokyo subway system, which killed 12 people and sickened 5,500, and the thwarted attempt to spread deadly hydrogen cyanide gas in the Shinjuku station on May 5 were intended as preludes to worse disasters, police sources are suggesting in leaks to the Japanese press. The big show was apparently set for November, when plans...
...could have been horrific. To triumph in that war, the cult built a series of munitions factories within its complex at the foot of Mount Fuji. Aum researchers were trying to develop germ weapons -- including the Ebola virus -- and an assembly line was about to produce automatic rifles. Behind one building's false walls was a $700,000 lab able to turn out 60 to 80 kg a month of the nerve gas sarin -- enough to kill 6 million to 8 million people. One plan called for releasing the sarin over Tokyo from 1.65-m-long remote-controlled helicopters. Asahara...
Capable of planning anything, perhaps. But the police accounts include details that challenge the group's technical proficiencies, portraying it as a cult that couldn't shoot straight. The remote-controlled helicopters, purchased from a dealer in northern Japan for $20,000 each in 1993, crashed during the first two practice sessions. The germ-warfare team, despite experiments with botulism, never produced a working weapon. During one of its experiments, a chemical vaporized into a foul-smelling gas, escaped into the outside air and precipitated, coating nearby cars with brown ooze...
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...
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...