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AUM voice heard over end of governmental surveillance
Mainichi Shimbun (25.12.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (26.12.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email info@hrwf.net - Government intelligence officers will interview the AUM Shinrikyo doomsday cult to decide whether a tough watch over the group will continue after the scheduled surveillance period expires at the end of January.
Designated as a group "that could undermine public order," the cult has been under surveillance by the Public Security Investigation Agency and ordered to report its activities regularly.
Yet the term of the special watch is slated to finish Jan. 31 leading the government agency to file a request with the Public Security Examination Commission that the strict surveillance continue.
In response to the agency's request, AUM members on Tuesday tabled a report apparently asking the commission to turn it down.
Under the law, surveillance renewal reviews normally involve simply screening submitted requests. However, the commission decided to give the cult a chance to explain its reasons for requesting that the government watch be lifted. |
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Aum wins redress in residency row
Japan Times (26.11.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (02.12.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email info@hrwf.net - The Mito District Court on Tuesday ordered the town government of Sanwa, in Ibaraki Prefecture, to pay about 2 million yen to 21 members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult for refusing their applications to register their residencies.
The town rejected the applications in April 1999, saying the applicants could jeopardize the peaceful lives of local residents.
The Aum members filed a suit saying their basic human rights are being violated because they are unable to register for national health insurance without residency documents.
However, the town government has stood by its decision, saying it was appropriate and that it had rejected the applications partly out of consideration of the desire of local residents.
A number of local governments across Japan have refused to allow members of the cult -- responsible for the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system that killed 12 people and injured thousands more -- to register as residents.
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Surveillance extension sought
Agency says Aum still capable of indiscriminate killings
Japan Times (24.11.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (02.12.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email info@hrwf.net - The Public Security Investigation Agency has decided to file a request with the Public Security Examination Commission to keep Aum Shinrikyo under surveillance for another three years and reported the decision to Justice Minister Mayumi Moriyama, sources close to the case said Saturday.
The agency has been monitoring the activities of the cult, which has renamed itself Aleph, under an anti-Aum law, which stipulates the cult must be left alone once the commission determines it no longer poses a danger to the public.
The Public Security Investigation Agency wants to extend the surveillance on the grounds that Aum guru Chizuo Matsumoto, still on trial for the 1995 nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway system as well as other crimes, "continues to wield power over the cult" and can order indiscriminate mass killings.
Acting under the powers of the current surveillance authority, the agency has kept 88 Aum facilities in 16 prefectures under watch since January 2000.
The current period of surveillance for the cult will expire at the end of January. The agency plans to file the request at the beginning of December.
Matsumoto, 47, known to his followers as Shoko Asahara, has been on trial since April 1996.
He continues to deny the charges against him.
Twelve people died and thousands were injured in the March 20, 1995, subway gassing.
The cult filed a petition with the Public Security Investigation Agency in August demanding that it cancel the policy of keeping the cult under surveillance for another three years.
It also filed a request with the Public Security Examination Commission on Nov. 6 that it cease to be subject to surveillance, arguing it no longer poses a public threat.
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CIA says Aum poses cyberterror threat
Kyodo News: (29.10.2002) / HRWF Int. (30.10.2002) Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email info@hrwf.net - WASHINGTON Japan's Aum Shinrikyo cult, responsible for a 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway and other heinous crimes, has the potential to mount a cyberterrorist attack on the United States, according to a recently released CIA report.
It says Aum, which renamed itself Aleph in January 2000, "is the terrorist group that places the highest level of importance on developing cyber skills" and "identifies itself as a cyber cult and derives millions of dollars a year from computer retailing."
Members of the doomsday cult have been found guilty of crimes including the Tokyo subway gassing of March 20, 1995 in which 12 people died and thousands were injured.
The declassified CIA document was submitted to a special Senate committee in April to discuss threats to U.S. national security.
The report also addresses the al Qaeda terrorist network's sources of funding from a global network of individuals and charities and its ability to conduct cyberattacks on infrastructure that depend on electronic or computer systems.
The document shows how the U.S. was still in the dark in April regarding North Korea's secret nuclear weapons program as it cited other issues such as the country continues to harbor terrorists linked to a 1970 hijacking of a Japan Airlines plane that was forced to the North.
North Korea's suspected nuclear weapons program surfaced two weeks ago after Washington revealed that Pyongyang has admitted that it has maintained a secret program to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons development in violation of a 1994 bilateral nuclear accord between the North and the U.S.
The document, written in April, also stated that "the possibility that state collapse in North Korea could lead to reunification" of the Korean Peninsula could not be excluded.
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Japan cult leader's wife released
AP (15.10.2002)/ HRWF Int. (16.10.2002) Website http://www.hrwf.net - Email info@hrwf.net - The wife of the doomsday cult guru accused of masterminding the 1995 Tokyo subway nerve gas attack was released from prison Tuesday, ending her six-year jail term, media reports said.
Tomoko Matsumoto, 44, was expected to return to her home outside of Tokyo where her three children live, Kyodo News said.
The Justice Ministry refused to confirm her release, citing privacy concerns.
In September 1999, the Tokyo District Court found that Matsumoto conspired with her husband, Aum Shinrikyo founder Shoko Asahara, and several disciples to kill a fellow cultist.
The court later reduced her seven-year sentence by one year, after she appealed and apologized to the victims' parents. She claimed she was present at the murder but did not commit the 1994 killing.
Matsumoto said in a statement that she plans to divorce her husband and stay away from the group, according to Kyodo.
So far, 10 cultists have been sentenced to death. However, none have been executed.
Asahara is still on trial for allegedly planning the subway gassing that killed 12 and injured thousands, as well as other killings.
Despite a police crackdown following the gassing, the cult has regrouped under a new name, Aleph, with about 1,000 members.
The group remains under surveillance by Japan's Public Safety Agency, which considers it a threat.
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Japanese doomsday cult member gets death penalty
for role in 1995 subway nerve gassing
by Kozo Mizoguchi (AP, October 11, 2002)
Japan Today (12.10.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (10.09.2002) - A former leader of the doomsday cult that carried out a nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 was sentenced to death Friday, court officials said, making him the tenth member of the group given the death penalty for the attack.
Seiichi Endo, 42, was sentenced to die for helping produce the deadly sarin gas used by Aum Shinri Kyo in the March 1995 attack, which killed 12 people and sickened thousands, said Tokyo District Court official Emi Shimoyama.
Endo was also found guilty of helping make sarin used in a June 1994 attack on a quiet residential area in the central Japanese city of Matsumoto that killed seven people.
Prosecutors said Endo deserved the death penalty because he knew his handiwork would be turned on innocent people, possibly killing them.
So far, prosecutors have requested death sentences for 11 cult members. With Friday's verdict, 10 have been sentenced to die, but some of those sentences are on appeal and none has been carried out.
Aum guru Shoko Asahara is still being tried for allegedly masterminding the subway gas attack and other killings.
Endo joined Aum in 1987, when he was a graduate student of virology at Kyoto University, one of Japan's most prestigious schools. In addition to nerve gas, the cult was developing biological weapons and vowed to topple the government to set off a chain of events that would lead to Armageddon.
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Moonies ordered to compensate for three forced marriages
Japan Today (22.08.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (10.09.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net - The Tokyo District Court on Wednesday ordered the Unification Church to pay about 9.2 million yen in damages to three former followers for illegally enticing and forcing them into marriage against their will.
A lawyer for the three said it is the first time a ruling has recognized the illegality of forced participation in such arranged mass marriages and ordered the Unification Church, whose members are commonly known as "Moonies" after its founder Sun Myung Moon, to pay compensation.
The plaintiffs - two women and a man aged between 37 and 40 - had sought a total of 43 million yen.
The man and one of the two women are residents of Tokyo, while the other woman comes from Fukuoka Prefecture, southwestern Japan.
In handing down the ruling, Presiding Judge Hirotsugu Koizumi described the mass marriages as illegal and infringing on the concept of freedom in marrying.
"The followers had no freedom to refuse the partners selected for them, and were made to believe that if they did not participate here, they and their ancestors would not be saved," Koizumi said.
Koizumi said that in recruiting followers the Moonies simply wanted to get hold of people who would make use of their products, and not because they were sincerely spreading their teachings.
He added that the movement tried to inculcate fear and anxiety in its followers and confuse them enough to prevent them from breaking away.
The Unification Church said it is disappointed with the ruling and will appeal against it after studying the details. (Kyodo News)
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Japan poison cult "hounded" by police
by Richard Lloyd Parry
The Independent (30.07.2002)/HRWF International Secretariat (31.07.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net - On paper at least, the life of Hiroshi Araki looks like something out of Franz Kafka. Whenever he steps outside his flat, at any time of the day or night, men with clipboards make a note of the time he leaves, who he is with and which way he is going. They are there, rain or shine, 24 hours a day, never fewer than three of them and sometimes a dozen.
Some are elderly retirees, local volunteers with time on their hands. Some wear uniforms, and some are plain-clothes men with policemen's eyes. Once a month they raid his flat and those of his friends, and confiscate files and computer disks. "The average person who experienced this kind of thing would have a nervous breakdown, but it's been going on for seven years so we've almost got used to it," says Mr Araki. "At least they've stopped following me."
Mr Araki is a skinny, earnest young man with a liking for yoga and meditation; he has committed no crime and threatens none. So why are the forces of justice in Japan treating him like an active member of a terrorist cell? The answer lies with the yoga group of which Mr Araki is a member.
Today it calls itself Aleph, and its teachings and practices are indistinguishable from the harmless mumbo-jumbo purveyed by any number of neo-hippy groups all over the world. But until two years ago it was known by a different name: Aum Shinri Kyo C apocalyptic religious cult, perpetrator of mass murder, and the least desirable next door neighbours in Japan.
Founded in the 1980s by a half-blind guru known as Shoko Asahara, the cult embarked on a series of bizarre crimes that culminated in the world's first ever terrorist use of chemical weapons. On 20 March 1995, in an apparent attempt to hurry along the Armageddon predicted by their guru, Asahara's followers released home-made sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subway.
Twelve people died, and more than 5,000 were blinded, choked and nauseated. A series of arrests followed and so far a number of Aum members have received death sentences for their part in the killings (the trial of the guru continues). The cult was declared bankrupt and, having been so devastatingly unmasked, it was assumed that it would quietly disband. But, to the irritation of the Japanese police and the alarm of many Japanese, it survives.
According to Mr Araki, who acts as the group's spokesman, it has 520 resident "monks" and 600 non-resident "laymen" C far fewer than the 11,000 who once followed Asahara.
Whenever they are asked, officials insist Aleph remains "dangerous". Even the US State Department includes it on its list of international terrorist groups. But despite the monthly search warrants, constant surveillance and a fervent desire to catch Aleph doing something, no one can explain what the danger is.
Aleph, both in person and on its website (http://english.aleph.to) has repeatedly apologised for the horrors of 1995. It has promised to pay 4bn yen (22m) in compensation to the victims and their families; so far Y300m has been handed over.
"Mobilising every possible criminal legal code and interpreting these laws as liberally as possible, they tried to criminalise many petty offences on an unprecedented scale," wrote Akira Fukuda, a criminal law professor and one of the few to express disquiet about official treatment of the group.
The truth is that the notion of a potentially resurgent Aum justifies police budgets and staff levels that otherwise would be hard to justify. The failure to prevent the subway attack remains the Japanese police's greatest ever humiliation and it is difficult not see an element of revenge in the petty abuses they dish out on the cult's successors. "It's the police and the mass media who are stirring up feelings against us," said Mr Araki. "What the police want to do is create an enemy and draw attention to it so they can create a scapegoat for society."
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High court cuts sentence for Aum sect member to 15 years in jail
AFP 05.07.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (08.07.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net - A Japanese high court reduced a prison sentence imposed on a former senior member of the Aum Supreme Truth sect by three years, saying he had shown deep remorse for his crimes.
The Tokyo High Court cut the 18-year sentence previously handed to Masahiro Tominaga, 33, by the Tokyo District Court in 1999, for crimes including the attempted murder of the governor of Tokyo with a parcel bomb in 1995.
"His criminal responsibility is grave, but he has apologized to victims and shown deep remorse by paying compensation to them," presiding Judge Shogo Takahashi told the court Friday.
Tominaga, a doctor who trained at Japan's elite Tokyo University, had pleaded not guilty at his trial, saying he was under the control of sect leader Shoko Asahara.
The doctor was one of the senior advisors in the cult known as the "emperor's secretariat."
Tominaga was also convicted of the attempted murder of an anti-sect lawyer and attempted cyanide gas attack at Shinjuku Station, Japan's biggest train station.
Last month, the Tokyo district court sentenced to death Tomomitsu Niimi, 38, a former officer of the doomsday cult for his role in a deadly 1995 sarin gas attack on Tokyo's subway lines and other murders.
He was the eighth Aum follower to be sentenced to hang for his crimes, while dozens of others, including Asahara, are still on trial.
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Aum Shinrikyo officer Niimi given death sentence for role in 26 murders
Japan Times (26.06.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (21.06.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net - Senior Aum Shinrikyo figure Tomomitsu Niimi was sentenced Wednesday to death for his role in 26 murders and other crimes committed by the doomsday cult, including two deadly sarin attacks.
The Tokyo District Court found Niimi, 38, guilty of playing active roles in 11 crimes perpetrated by the cult, including seven cases of murder and two attempted murders between 1989 and 1995. The seven murder cases involve 26 deaths.
Other than Aum founder Shoko Asahara, Niimi is the only Aum member indicted in all seven murder cases, including the June 1994 sarin attack in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, the March 1995 Tokyo subway gassing and the 1989 killing of an anti-Aum lawyer, his wife and their infant son.
Presiding Judge Yujiro Nakatani said Niimi bears grave criminal responsibility as a senior member of the cult, whose "unprecedentedly malicious" crimes shocked society.
The ruling marked the eighth death penalty the court has handed down to an Aum defendant.
Niimi immediately filed an appeal.
The judge said Niimi "willfully participated in the crimes, and actively fulfilled his orders. As a result, 26 people were deprived of their lives."
As Nakatani read the sentence, Niimi, who in his first trial session called himself "the direct disciple of Asahara," showed almost no emotion.
He told the court throughout his trial that he was still loyal to the guru, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, and that his belief in Asahara's teachings remained intact.
Niimi confessed to all the crimes for which he stood accused, other than the subway attack, but refused to apologize.
He said his "super-religious acts" transcended worldly values and that the crimes were his "self-sacrifice intended to salvage people."
"The defendant has refused to show any regret and has repeatedly made self-righteous excuses," the judge said. "The defendant has only insulted the victims and hurt their next of kin by his remarks (in court), and it is difficult to expect that he will someday repent."
Niimi's lawyers claimed that most of his crimes were part of Aum's attempts to cause turbulence in Japanese society based on their religious beliefs, and that only Asahara -- the accused mastermind -- should be sentenced to hang.
The court said, however, that Aum's crimes were mere attempts at self-protection rather than part of any action based on religious beliefs.
Shizue Takahashi, the widow of a subway worker killed in the 1995 sarin attack, told reporters after the ruling, "I have thought that (Niimi) deserves the death sentence. The accused behaved badly in court, and even seemed to be smiling."
Niimi, known as Aum's "home affairs minister" and one of Asahara's closest aides, played direct roles in all seven murder plots, with the exception of the subway attack, the court ruled.
His involvement in Aum's crimes began with the 1989 killing of cultist Shuji Taguchi, who tried to flee from the cult. Niimi strangled Taguchi, the court said.
He also strangled anti-Aum lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto and his 1-year-old son, Tatsuhiko, later that year, the court said.
Niimi played key roles in the cult's sarin attack in Matsumoto in June 1994 that killed seven people and seriously injured three others. In the same year, he participated in three other cult-related murders and one attempted murder, as well as another murder attempt in January 1995, the court said.
In the subway attack, which killed 12 and injured around 5,000, Niimi played a conspiratorial role and served as a driver for other cultists who released the deadly nerve gas on the trains, the court said.
Like the other seven cultists sentenced to death by the court, Niimi filed an appeal with a higher court.
The trials of four other senior Aum members, including Asahara, are still under way.
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Tokyo ward to enact anti-AUM ordinance
Mainichi Shimbun (05.06.2002)/HRWF International Secretariat (06.06.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net - The ward government of Tokyo's Setagaya-ku is poised to enact an ordinance aimed at protecting local residents from the AUM Shinrikyo cult that allegedly launched two deadly nerve gas attacks, officials said Wednesday.
The ward government will submit a draft ordinance to the ward assembly for approval during a session that opens on June 12.
Officials said the move comes after a local court ruled that the ward government's decision not to accept residency registration applications filed by cult members is illegal and therefore invalid.
This will be the first local ordinance across the country that targets the AUM Shinrikyo, according to ward officials. The move is expected to spur other local governments to enact similar ordinances.
"We would like to use the ordinance as a springboard to step up efforts to ease local residents' fears over the cult. We will strongly urge the national government to place the cult under its surveillance over an extended period," a ward official said.
If enacted, the ward government could invoke the ordinance in cases where activities conducted by any organization placed under surveillance are deemed to threaten the peaceful life of local residents.
Under the ordinance, the ward government would investigate the impact that such activities have on local residents' lives and implement measures to ensure residents' safety.
Specifically, the ward government intends to investigate the losses the existence of AUM members in the ward have caused to the local community, such as a fall in land prices and an increase in the number of residents moving out of the ward. The ward authorities are also considering hiring experts to provide counseling to local residents disturbed by the cult.
The draft ordinance also states that the ward government can provide subsidies to organizations involved in anti-cult activities.
The Public Security Investigation Agency placed the AUM Shinrikyo under its surveillance over a three-year period from January 2000 under the "law concerning surveillance of organizations involved in mass murder," which targets the cult. The agency regularly inspects the cult's facilities and orders it to report its activities.
Since December 2000, about 80 AUM members, including its leader Fumihiro Joyu, have moved into three apartment complexes in the ward's Karasuyama district. The ward government has turned down their applications for residency registration. However, the Tokyo District Court has ruled that its refusal to register them as Setagaya residents is illegal.
Shoko Asahara, founder of the cult, and many of his followers are under indictment on charges of involvement in many crimes he masterminded, including the March 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway system that killed 12 people and sickened thousands of others.
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Cult leader trial resumes in Japan
The Tokyo gas attack made thousands unwell
BBC News (23.05.2002)/HRWF International Secretariat (24.05.2002) - Website http://www.hrwf.net - E-mail info@hrwf.net - Lawyers in Japan have opened their defence of the man accused of masterminding the deadly Sarin nerve gas attacks on Tokyo's underground railway seven years ago.
The attacks killed 12 people and made thousands ill.
But lawyers acting for Shoko Asahara, the founder of the Aum Shinrikyo, or Supreme Truth Cult, said his doctrine did not justify murder and it had been misunderstood by his disciples.
The trial of Mr Asahara began in 1996, and correspondents say it has come to symbolise the slow pace of Japan's judicial system.
Mr Asahara, 47, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, is accused of ordering the Tokyo attack, as well as other killings, including a June 1994 gassing in the central Japanese city of Matsumoto in which seven people died.
If convicted he could be sentenced to death.
Misunderstood
But his defence lawyers claimed in their opening submission on Thursday that as Mr Asahara's sect grew bigger, it became difficult for him to maintain control over all the disciples.
"By misunderstanding the teachings of the accused, Matsumoto, some disciples believed it is permissible to deprive people of their lives for their salvation and committed a series of crimes," the defence argued.
His lawyers instead accused Hideo Murai, "science and technology minister" in the cult's self-styled government, and another follower, Yoshihiro Inoue, of planning the subway attacks.
Murai was stabbed to death in front of television cameras in April 1995 by a man outside the cult's Tokyo headquarters. Inoue has been sentenced to life in prison.
Mr Asahara, dressed in a blue sweater and grey trousers, kept his eyes shut as his lawyers spoke, AFP news agency reported.
His defence team is expected to submit "not guilty" pleas on all 13 charges. Their submissions are expected to take about a year.
Aum Shinrikyo has since changed its name to Aleph and renounced violence.
But Japanese security agencies announced on Wednesday that they were renewing their three-year surveillance of the cult as they believe it remains a threat.
- AUM is now renamed Aleph and claims it is now benign
- Has about 1,000 lay followers and 650 followers in cult communes
- Predicted an apocalypse that only cult members would survive
- Thought to raise most funds from computer software business it runs
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Cult killers get seven years
AFP (26.03.2002) / HRWF International Secretariat (27.03.2002) C Website http://www.hrwf.net ꨨC Email info@hrwf.net -Two Japanese members of a faith healing cult were sentenced to seven years each in prison for the deaths through neglect of a young boy and a baby, whose corpses were then allowed to mummify in the hopes they would come back to life.
The Miyazaki District Court passed the sentence on Junichiro Higashi, 58, head of the private, cult-style Kaeda Juku school in Miyazaki, southwestern Japan, and Akemi Togashi, a 51-year-old female senior staff member of the school.
The pair were found guilty of taking into their custody in December 1997 a six-year-old boy, after promising to his parents that they would cure his acute kidney problem without medication.
During the trial, the prosecution said the defendants tried to exorcise the boy with prayers but he died the following month.
The parents demanded the return of the boy's body but the defendants locked it in a room at Higashi's luxury villa, insisting that the boy would come back to life. The prosecution said that the defendants had blamed the boy's illness on "karma" and barred the parents from using drugs or hospitals which they said were "full of evils."
The two were also found guilty of causing the death through neglect of a premature baby, who was born at the school in 1999, by failng to provide necessary medical treatment to the infant, the ruling said. The bodies of both the six-year-old boy and the premature baby were found mummified.
"It was an extremely cruel crime," presiding judge Heinai Komatsu told the court. Higashi and Togashi abandoned and mummified the bodies "because the accused were afraid that if the bodies were discovered, they would lose the trust of their school pupils," who believed Higashi had supernatural powers, the judge said.
The case was the second involving a cult and mummified bodies in as many months.
In February the 63-year-old Japanese leader of the Life Space cult was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the murder of a stroke victim who was bound as part of a "religious cure" and whose mummified body was found in a hotel in November 1999.
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Japanese Aum cultist gets 10 years for killing fellow disciple
AFP (25.03.2002) / HRWF International Secretariat (27.03.2002) C Website http://www.hrwf.net C Email info@hrwf.net - A Japanese court sentenced a senior member of the Aum Supreme Truth to 10 years in prison for murdering a cult pharmacist who tried to help a sick disciple escape.
Shinichi Koshikawa, 37, was given a 10-year prison term Monday at Tokyo District Court for conspiring with other followers to kill Kotaro Ochida, then 29, in January 1994.
Koshikawa, who headed the sect's self-styled "commerce department," is still a believer in cult guru Shoko Asahara, and had pleaded not guilty, denying his and Asahara's role in the killing, Jiji Press news agency said.
But in his ruling, judge Hisaharu Yasui said the killing was "a cruel crime in which many followers restrained the victim and strangled him" with a rope at Aum's main compound in Kamikuishiki, a central Japanese village at the foot of Mt. Fuji.
Koshikawa "played an active role by holding the victim down," the judge ruled, adding there were no grounds for leniency.
Asahara ordered Ochida killed after he was found in a restricted area of the compound by followers as he was trying to arrange the escape of another follower, who was ill and confined in an Aum clinic, the court heard.
The guru himself has been on trial for almost six years, facing multiple charges, including murder.
He is charged with masterminding the 1995 gas attack on the Tokyo subway system on March 20, 1995, in which 12 people died and more than 5,000 were injured by the Nazi-invented sarin gas.
Asahara has also been implicated in an earlier gas attack in the central city of Matsumoto that killed seven people in June 1994.
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Doomsday cult smaller, still alarming
Seven years ago, the sect released sarin gas in a Tokyo subway; 12 died.
By Steve Goldstein
Philidelphia Inquirer (18.03.2002) / HRWF International Secretariat (19.03.2002) C Website http://www.hrwf.net C Email info@hrwf.net - In a quiet suburb outside this teeming city, residents have hung banners from apartment balconies to greet their new neighbors.
"Aum Get Out," says one, while another urges: "Leave Aum. We want to rehabilitate you." "Aum" is Aum Shinri Kyo, the religious sect responsible for the release of sarin gas on the Tokyo subway, which killed 12 people and injured nearly 4,000, on March 20, 1995. Nearly seven years later, the onetime doomsday cult has reorganized on a much smaller scale. But it has renewed concerns among Japanese officials and citizens.
At its peak, the cult had an estimated 17,000 members in Japan, more than 10,000 in Russia, and chapters in the United States and Germany.
Shoko Asahara, the legally blind, charismatic leader of Aum Shinri Kyo -> "Aum Supreme Truth" - planned to overthrow the Japanese government and "purify" a corrupt society through murder.
Almost six years after hearings began, Asahara is still on trial. The prosecution recently finished its case, and legal experts say the proceeding may take another six years. Of the five people who released the sarin gas, two were executed. Two are appealing their death sentence, and one is serving a life term. Former cult spokesman Fumihiro Joyu served a three-year prison term and is the sect's new leader.
Charged with 13 crimes, Asahara is likely to be sentenced to death by hanging if convicted. Criminal trials in Japan generally take a long time, although Asahara's is exceptional, legal experts said. In addition to the mountain of evidence arrayed against him, Asahara has chosen not to speak with his lawyers, making his defense an even more daunting prospect.
Some observers believe the government is moving slowly because it is afraid of making the guru a martyr.
Journalist Shoko Egawa, who has been writing about Aum for more than a decade, doesn't believe this is so. "If the government is prolonging this, it is because they don't want to be seen as acting hastily; they don't want to be criticized," she said.
Egawa speculated that Asahara would "become bigger among his followers" if he were executed.
Said Susumu Shimazono, a professor of religious studies at Tokyo University: "It's difficult to say whether it's more dangerous for Asahara to be dead or how much influence Asahara has over the reorganized sect is a matter of debate. The group has renamed itself Aleph, after the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which means "new beginning."
Aum differed from other so-called new religions in Japan because it was more urban and drew followers from the elite wealthy families and graduates of the top universities. The sect's adherents rejected the corporate, consumerist system of the 1980s and '90s in Japan.
Originally a yoga and meditation sect, Aum drew from mystical Tibetan Buddhism. Through asceticism and devotion to Asahara, Aum followers sought to purify themselves of the corrupting influences of the world.
Asahara's apocalyptic vision embraced killing as a rite of purification.
"Many still follow Asahara, and he never renounced justified murder," Shimazono said.
That is cause for worry. In December 2000, Justice Minister Masahiko Komura asserted that Asahara continued to wield enormous influence over his followers and said Aum-Aleph still posed a threat to the public.
In 1999, crisis management consultant Raisuke Miyawaki, a former investigator with the National Police Agency, warned the government that it had hired many young systems engineers with Aum ties to help fix expected Y2K problems. A later probe revealed that more than 100 agencies and companies had hired them as subcontractors.
Miyawaki and others believe that Aleph will become a "cyber cult." The sect's secretive ways have alarmed those living near Aleph's cells.
In Karasuyama, a Tokyo suburb in which Aleph has settled, banners are only the most obvious evidence. The public security department and local residents monitor the sect's comings and goings 24 hours a day.
Plainclothes agents from the Public Security Investigation Agency regularly search Aleph's apartments. Hiroshi Araki is Aleph's official spokesman. During an interview in a roach-infested apartment packed with computers and VCRs - Aum funded itself by establishing a cut-rate computer and software business - Araki said Aleph had about 600 "devoted" followers and about 1,000 overall in 11 cities.
Seventy live in Karasuyama. Araki, 33, a graduate of Kyoto University, joined the cult in 1992. He said the sarin attacks and other crimes attributed to Aum came as a shock to him, but he remains a follower "so I can find out the truth" about what happened.
Aleph still follows many of Asahara's teachings, he said, although they have renounced the guru's dictates regarding justifiable homicide.
Police searched this apartment and others for three hours two days earlier, mainly checking the computers. Araki said they had become accustomed to the scrutiny. He seemed resigned to suffering for Aum's sins and willing to endure it to continue a search for enlightenment.
"I joined Aum because I couldn't find a comfortable place in this society," Araki said. "This is my destiny."
Twenty years ago, a survey of Japanese religious consciousness showed that most university students thought that religion was gloomy, closed and boring. A post-Aum survey revealed that students added a new adjective: abunai, or "dangerous."
Araki, however, vigorously denied that Aleph threatened the society it has rejected. Still, he said, "I can understand psychologically why people are still afraid.
"This is a conflict I myself have a problem with."
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Aum cult still dangerous, says minister
BBC (12.03.2002) - HRWF International Secretariat (14.03.2002) C Website http://www.hrwf.net C Email info@hrwf.net - The authorities in Japan say the Aum Supreme Truth cult responsible for the 1995 gas attack on the Tokyo underground railway is still dangerous and needs monitoring.
The justice minister, Mayumi Moriyama, said the group still considered its founder, Shoko Asahara, an object of devotion.
Mr Asahara is on trial facing several charges, including ordering the sarin gas attack, which killed 12 people and made thousands ill.
If convicted he could be sentenced to death.
The Aum cult - which has changed its name to Aleph - says it is now a benign religious group. It has an estimated 650 followers living in cult communes and some 1,000 lay members.
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From Aum Shinrikyo, a terrorist religious organisation, to Aleph
Interview with Aleph's deputy officer for public relations
Willy Fautr
Aum Shinrikyo started as a harmless yoga group in the eighties but when its founder, ShokoAsahara, introduced the concept of liberation from bad karma by enduring various sufferings, some used this idea to justify the abuse of other members. This was the beginning of a drift that led to apocalyptic beliefs and to a series of spectacular attempts. On June 27, 1994 clouds of sarin gas engulfed the Kita Fukashi district of Matsumoto (150 miles west of Tokyo), in the vicinity of three judges set to hear a case against the group. Seven people died and hundreds were injured. On March 19, 1995, police entered Aum headquarters in Osaka and arrested three members for an alleged abduction of a disruptive, disobedient member. On March 20, 1995, a gas attack orchestrated by ten highly placed devotees in Tokyo's subway killed twelve people and injured thousands of others. Murders and other violent incidents followed. Asahara and more than a hundred of his followers were indicted on various charges. Several of them have been sentenced to death but are on appeal. The death sentence is applied by hanging in Japan.
While ShokoAsara was in prison, a new leader has emerged: Fumihiro Joyu. He is now trying to rebuild the movement under another name, Aleph. Under a new law passed in 2000, the police and officials of the Ministry of Justice are allowed to enter sect facilities at will to conduct inspections. Aum is also on the U.S. list of terrorist organisations to be put under surveillance.
When I approached the premises of Aleph for my interview on February 7, 2002, I noticed a policeman at both ends of the street. Outside the block of flats where they have established their new headquarters, two policemen in plain clothes watched my going in their office from a shelter where pictures of ShokoAsahara and of the most prominent accused had been displayed. Inside the flat converted into an office, three young men. One of them was wearing worn out jeans. It was the deputy officer of the reincarnation of Aum, Seiwa Ito. He had accepted my interview only after I had faxed him my questions.
HRWF : How much distance has Aleph placed between itself and Shoko Asahara ?
Seiwa Ito: Aleph denounces all the crimes committed by Aum Shinrikyo, its leader and some of its members. However, we still regard Shoko Asahara very highly as a meditator and we keep a very good evaluation of his religious achievements.
HRWF: How can you at the same time admire someone and condemn his behaviour?
Seiwa Ito : (Long silence) We condemn his behaviour but we still believe his teaching was good.
HRWF: To what extent can you say that you legitimately represent the continuation of Aum Shinrikyo and that his eldest daughter lacks any legitimacy in this regard?
Seiwa Ito: We have no contact with Shoko Asahara's daughter. She is not a member of Aleph. Five out of ten members of Aum Shinrikyo board of directors have created Aleph so that we can perpetuate Asahara's teachings.
HRWF: Have you visited Shoko Asahara in prison? Where is he detained?
Seiwa Ito: He is in Kosuge detention centre, Adachi-ku. Up to 1996-1997, we were in contact with him through his lawyers. He was alone in a cell. Now only his lawyers are permitted to see him but Asahara does not want to meet them and when they visit him, he refuses to speak to them.
HRWF: How has your movement evolved in the last few years?
Seiwa Ito: As you have seen, we are under very strict police surveillance day and night (*) but we are not dangerous. In the first month of this year, the police have raided our office, taken away a number of items and computers. When we have visitors, they make a report but they are friendly with us.
Aleph now numbers 500 monks and nuns and 600 laymen. Most of them are in their 20s and 30s. We have branches in Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Fukuoka, Funabashi (Chiba), Nagano,Kanazawa, Kyoto, Sendai and Tokushima. In Russia, we have lost the contact with the 200 former Aum Shinrikyo members but we have set up a liaison office in Moscow to try to locate them and recreate an Aleph branch.
HRWF: You are suspected of being a dangerous movement. What implications does that have on your daily life?
Seiwa Ito: We are not dangerous. We have not committed any illegal act since Aleph was created two years ago. But we are not welcome anywhere. As you have seen outside, neighbours have displayed banderols asking for our eviction from the street. Some of our members are denied residence registration. This is the case for me. I am living in this flat but I have no residence permit. That means that I am officially homeless and that I have no passport and I cannot vote.
On my leaving the building, a policeman in plain clothes came to me and asked me kindly in Japanese (a language I do not know) who I was and what I had been doing. Two words of English and my press card helped him understand my answer. The future will say whether the successors of Aum Shinrikyo will keep away from any illegal, violent and terrorist activities.
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Prosecutors demand death for AUM's sarin maker
Mainichi Shimbun (12.02.2002) / HRWF International Secretariat (19.02.2002) C Website http://www.hrwf.net C Email info@hrwf.net - AUM Shinrikyo "Health Minister" Seiichi Endo, who developed the deadly sarin gas used in the cult's terrorist attacks, should be sentenced to death, according to prosecutors at a Tokyo court on Tuesday.
"He played a crucial part in the indiscriminate mass-murder by being the central figure in the sarin gas development team," a prosecutor said in demanding that the Tokyo District Court send Endo to the gallows. Endo, a 41-year-old veterinarian, is accused of developing the poison gas and releasing it in the residential area of Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, and killing seven people in June 1994. He also manufactured the gas used to kill 12 and injure thousands on the Tokyo subway system in March the following year.
Prosecutors said Endo was motivated by greed.
"He was in charge of developing biological and chemical weapons for the cult ... He did so in the hope of becoming a member of the privileged class within the group", a prosecutor told the court. "He should not be allowed to shift the blame to others."
Endo has admitted to the allegations but his lawyers have insisted that their client believed he was participating in "training to accomplish missions without paying attention to the consequences." They also argued that Endo was under mind control by AUM guru Shoko Asahara and thus cannot fully shoulder the responsibility for his actions.
The court is expected to hand down the judgment in autumn this year.
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Trial of Japanese cult leader hits halfway after six years
Reuters (11.01.2002)/ HRWF International Secretariat (14.01.2002) - Website: http://www.hrwf.net - Email: info@hrwf.net - The trial of the leader of a Japanese doomsday cult charged with masterminding a deadly sarin gas attack on Tokyo subways hit its half-way point on Thursday, nearly six years after hearings began.
Prosecutors wrapped up their arguments at the Tokyo District Court, where Shoko Asahara, founder of the Aum Supreme Truth cult, is on trial for 13 crimes including planning and ordering the 1995 attack which killed 12 and left thousands ill, Kyodo news agency said.
The trial of Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, has come to symbolise Japan's snail-paced judicial system.
The trial began in April 1996 and legal experts say it may take at least six more years before the defence concludes its arguments and a verdict is reached.
If convicted, Asahara -- who has pleaded not guilty except to one charge of attempted murder -- is likely to be sentenced to death by hanging, the maximum penalty for murder.
A number of cult members have already been sentenced to death.
At the 218th public hearing on Thursday, the defence team cross-examined the prosecution's last witness, a former senior member of AUM accused of helping
engineer the attack.
The court has proposed starting arguments by the defence on May 23, but defence lawyers want more time, Kyodo said.
"It remains unclear what the AUM members were thinking and why they did such things," Osamu Watanabe, chief defence lawyer, told a news conference. "Prosecutors say we are using stalling tactics, but this is invalid."
The cult, which has changed its name to Aleph - the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet - insists it is now a benign religious group, but the public still harbours concerns.
The deaths from anthrax in the United States following the September 11 attacks on Washington and New York revived memories of Aum, which two years before the March 1995 sarin attack sprayed anthrax into the air above its Tokyo headquarters.
Experts said the fact that it was a harmless strain designed to be used as a vaccine for cattle prevented a disaster from occurring then.
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