Word: sarin
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...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 would follow up the attack by overpowering the Japanese Self-Defense Forces and taking control of Japan with his own tanks and fighter jets...
...break came after the arrest on April 26 of Masami Tsuchiya, 30, a doctoral student in organic chemistry who police said led the effort to make sarin. Charged initially with the minor crime of helping other Aum members evade arrest, he was extensively questioned about the sarin attack. In consultation with a psychologist, police found they were able to break Tsuchiya quickly, despite his reputation as a hard-core Aum member. Shoko Egawa, an expert on the cult, offered an explanation: "The best-educated members were really prized by Asahara and did not go through the same indoctrination that...
According to 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...
...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...