Latest news with #sarin
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Yahoo
Japanese authorities fear sarin death cult founder's son is continuing his legacy
Japanese authorities have warned that the son of a cult leader behind the deadly sarin nerve gas attack in Tokyo's subway network in 1995 is now the leader of a successor group. At least 14 people were killed and more than 5,000 were left sickened after the cult's members released sarin nerve gas in the capital's subway trains on 20 March in 1995. The cult, Aum Shinrikyo or Supreme Truth, was disbanded and its founder Chizuo Matsumoto, known as Shoko Asahara, and 12 of his disciples were executed in 2018 for carrying out the attack. Yet other groups continue to spread Shoko Asahara's apocalyptic messaging. One of the most prominent is known as Aleph. and it continues to attract followers despite facing repeated restrictions from the government for failing to declare its assets. Japan's Public Security Intelligence Agency (PSIA) on Tuesday announced that the 31-year-old second son of Shoko Asahara, a shadowy figure whose true identity is not known, has been 'involved in organisational decision-making and is leading Aleph's operations'. On Tuesday, the PSIA said that the man has been leading Aleph's operations for about a decade with help from Asahara's 66-year-old widow Tomoko Matsumoto. By 2017, the son had begun referring to himself as a 'second-generation guru', reported The Japan Times. The agency also confirmed that the group has 20 facilities around Japan with an estimated 1,190 followers as it published its latest report into Aleph's status and activities. Officials in Japan have prohibited the use of the group's 16 facilities across the country and designated the residence used by Asahara's son and widow in Saitama prefecture's Koshigaya city as the new Aleph site. It is also known as the 'Shin-Koshigaya facility', the report added. The PSIA is now looking to force the son-mother duo to disclose the property's purpose and activities held there. Around 1,600 former members still operate under renamed groups and have ignored an order to pay damages to survivors and bereaved families. During the 8am attack in 1995, five cult members got on separate train cars on three subway lines converging at Kasumigaseki, Japan's government centre, each dropping bags of sarin onto train carriage floors. They punctured the bags with umbrellas, releasing the gas inside the train cars which had hundreds of people inside. Within minutes, commuters poured out of the trains onto the platforms, rubbing their eyes and gasping for air. Some collapsed. Others fled into the streets where ambulances and rescue workers in hazmat suits gave first-aid Shizue Takahashi lost her husband, a deputy station master, in the attack. She expressed alarm that Asahara's second son has been identified as his de facto successor. 'Asahara's second son was born and raised within the Aum Shinrikyo cult and has been indoctrinated during that time by his father's teachings,' Ms Takahashi told the South China Morning Post. She claimed he 'personally desires to seize power and rebuild the organisation'. 'If he becomes as powerful within the cult as his father was, I believe he will try to expand it and create a new version of Aum Shinrikyo,' she told the SCMP.
The Independent
4 days ago
- The Independent
Japanese authorities fear sarin death cult founder's son is continuing his legacy
Japanese authorities have warned that the son of a cult leader behind the deadly sarin nerve gas attack in Tokyo 's subway network in 1995 is now the leader of a successor group. At least 14 people were killed and more than 5,000 were left sickened after the cult's members released sarin nerve gas in the capital's subway trains on 20 March in 1995. The cult, Aum Shinrikyo or Supreme Truth, was disbanded and its founder Chizuo Matsumoto, known as Shoko Asahara, and 12 of his disciples were executed in 2018 for carrying out the attack. Yet other groups continue to spread Shoko Asahara's apocalyptic messaging. One of the most prominent is known as Aleph. and it continues to attract followers despite facing repeated restrictions from the government for failing to declare its assets. Japan's Public Security Intelligence Agency (PSIA) on Tuesday announced that the 31-year-old second son of Shoko Asahara, a shadowy figure whose true identity is not known, has been 'involved in organisational decision-making and is leading Aleph's operations'. On Tuesday, the PSIA said that the man has been leading Aleph's operations for about a decade with help from Asahara's 66-year-old widow Tomoko Matsumoto. By 2017, the son had begun referring to himself as a 'second-generation guru', reported The Japan Times. The agency also confirmed that the group has 20 facilities around Japan with an estimated 1,190 followers as it published its latest report into Aleph's status and activities. Officials in Japan have prohibited the use of the group's 16 facilities across the country and designated the residence used by Asahara's son and widow in Saitama prefecture's Koshigaya city as the new Aleph site. It is also known as the 'Shin-Koshigaya facility', the report added. The PSIA is now looking to force the son-mother duo to disclose the property's purpose and activities held there. Around 1,600 former members still operate under renamed groups and have ignored an order to pay damages to survivors and bereaved families. During the 8am attack in 1995, five cult members got on separate train cars on three subway lines converging at Kasumigaseki, Japan's government centre, each dropping bags of sarin onto train carriage floors. They punctured the bags with umbrellas, releasing the gas inside the train cars which had hundreds of people inside. Within minutes, commuters poured out of the trains onto the platforms, rubbing their eyes and gasping for air. Some collapsed. Others fled into the streets where ambulances and rescue workers in hazmat suits gave first-aid Shizue Takahashi lost her husband, a deputy station master, in the attack. She expressed alarm that Asahara's second son has been identified as his de facto successor. 'Asahara's second son was born and raised within the Aum Shinrikyo cult and has been indoctrinated during that time by his father's teachings,' Ms Takahashi told the South China Morning Post. She claimed he 'personally desires to seize power and rebuild the organisation'. 'If he becomes as powerful within the cult as his father was, I believe he will try to expand it and create a new version of Aum Shinrikyo,' she told the SCMP.
Japan Times
18-05-2025
- Japan Times
1,400 photos donated to remember horrors of Aum Shinrikyo cult
A 97-year-old man from central Japan has donated about 1,400 photos taken during his years of confronting the now-defunct Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult. The former village of Kamikuishiki, currently the town of Fujikawaguchiko in Yamanashi Prefecture, was once home to the largest Aum Shinrikyo base in Japan. Kamikuishiki resident Seiichi Takeuchi waged a battle against the group from the time the cult set up the base in the village's Fujigane district in 1989. At the base, the group put up many facilities, called "satyam," some of which were used to manufacture sarin nerve gas. Aum Shinrikyo used the nerve gas in an attack on Tokyo's subway system in 1995, which left 14 people dead and over 6,000 others injured. The cult finally left the village in 1996, after the arrest of its leader Chizuo Matsumoto, who went by the name of Shoko Asahara, in 1995. Matsumoto was executed in 2018. According to Takeuchi, one of the first things the cult did after moving into the village was to build a 3-meter-high wall around a plot of grassland and start constructing facilities within it. Takeuchi, who was a key member of a group of local residents, lodged protests each time there was an issue involving the cult. Every time, the cult asked for evidence, prompting Takeuchi to carry around a camera and snap photos. Takeuchi said that the infamous guru directly told him that he was fueling anti-Aum Shinrikyo sentiment among local residents. He also found that his phone had been bugged. Despite the frightening situation, Takeuchi continued to take pictures on his camera until the cult's Kamikuishiki facilities were demolished in 1998. Some 1,400 photos include ones capturing the strange-smelling white smoke escaping from a window of a facility used to manufacture sarin gas and of discolored plants near the cult's base. Seiichi Takeuchi, who has donated about 1,400 photos he took during his years of confronting the now-defunct Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult, speaks in an interview last month. | Jiji After a request from police, Takeuchi provided a photo of a car crash that occurred at the village. A truck that was in the background of the photo was the same vehicle later used in a sarin gas attack in the city of Matsumoto in Nagano Prefecture in 1994, which left eight people dead and over 140 others injured. Takeuchi has provided police and the Public Security Intelligence Agency with his photos over the years. Nearly 30 years after the cult left the village, Takeuchi donated his photos to the town of Fujikawaguchiko in March this year. "I hope people don't forget what happened," Takeuchi said, adding that he hopes many people will see his photos. The town government currently has about 130 photos, mainly those of the Aum Shinrikyo facilities, on display at a local educational center.
Times
17-05-2025
- Times
Clock is ticking in the hunt for Assad's stash of chemical weapons
Abdul Hamid walks slowly in a black Adidas tracksuit, head bowed, through a dusty graveyard. The cemetery, ringed by the remains of bombed-out buildings, bears silent witness to what unfolded in Syria. The 36-year-old tradesman stops, murmurs a prayer and begins pulling weeds from the earth around the sun-bleached gravestones. He points to them one by one: 'My cousin, my wife Sana, both of my children — the twins — another cousin and his daughter, two more cousins and one of his sons, both of my brothers Yasser and Abdul Karim and their children.' The list continues, an unrelenting rhythm of grief. Not a mass grave, but a mass death, all felled by a single, silent killer. On April 4, 2017, a sarin-laced rocket dropped
