Word: tsuchiya
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...into groups to produce conventional arms, chemical weapons, biological weapons and drugs. The least successful initiative was germ research, even though Aum sent a medical team to Zaire in 1992 following mistaken reports of an outbreak of Ebola. The most successful was the sarin production unit. Chief chemist Masaya Tsuchiya, 30, told police that he concocted a total of 25 kg of sarin between November 1993 and the Tokyo attack. Details are fragmentary. Incomplete cult memos have been confiscated suggesting that Aum wanted to buy lasers, fighter jets and tanks. No police report has fully explained the March subway gassing...
...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...