AUM SHINROKYO CULT AND THE TOKYO SUBWAY SARIN GAS ATTACK

AUM SHINROKYO CULT

Aum Shinrokyo Cult is the doomsday cult that carried a poison gas attack in Tokyo in 1995 that killed 12 people and was responsible for the deaths of 27 people total. The cult was is headed by a semi-blind, quasi-mystic named Shoko Asahara. At the time of the attack, the Aum Shinrokyo cult was believed to have had 6,000 to 12,000 members in Japan, many living in communes in different parts of the country. The cult also had an estimated 30,000 followers in Russia.

Aum Shinsen no Kai debuted in 1984 and began full-scale operations in July 1987 after changing its name to Aum Supreme Truth. The assets of the Aum Shinrokyo Cult (also known simply as Aum or the Aum Cult) at that the time of the subway attack was valued at between $300 million and $1 billion. Asahara owned at least three luxury cars. He was driven around in a Rolls Royce and shuttled from place to place in Soviet-made Mi-17 helicopter made in Tatarstan and transported to Japan by Azerbaijani Air. The cult lost $1 million in risky gold investment in Australia but reportedly made a fortune by investing in a chain of discount stores, coffee shops and a personal-computer assembly factory.

A total of 29 people were killed and about 6,500 suffered injuries aum-related crimes that included the 1989 murder of lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto and his family, the 1994 sarin attack in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, and the nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system the following year. In a court ruling against one member the presiding judge called his acts "challenges to a law-abiding nation," and said they were "extremely antisocial and showed outrageous disregard for human life.�

The sarin attack remains the worst terrorist attack on Japanese soil. A total of 189 former senior members of the cult and others were indicted, and all except one were found guilty. A total of 13 cult members were sentenced to death for involvement in either the sarin gas attacks in Matsumoto or on the Tokyo subway system, or the murder of the Sakamoto family. No one has been executed. There is strong opinion within the ministry that the death penalty for cult leader Matsumoto should be carried out first as he is the mastermind behind the cases.

Book Underground by Haruki Murakami (Vintage, 1997), a collection of interviews with survivors

Links in this Website: RELIGIOUS CULTS IN JAPAN Factsanddetails.com/Japan

Shoko Asahara

Shoko Asahara, the leader of the Aum, admired both Buddha and Hitler, claimed he could levitate, asserted he had traveled to the future and been reborn several times and said he could bestow magical powers on his followers. He often wore pink satin pajamas and like to spend his time meditating. Followers described him as warm, joking and "cuddly." In 1992, he wrote a book called Declaring Myself Christ. Most of what is known about Shoko Asahara was reported in Ambitions of a Messiah, a 1991 book about Asahara and his cult, written by a respected Japanese journalist Shoko Egawa.

The son of a poor tatami mat-maker from Kyushu, Shoko Asahara was born Chizuo Matsumoto in March 1955 in Yatsishiro, a city in Kyushu, 40 miles south of Kumamoto. He was born sightless in one eye and had glaucoma in the other eye which caused his sight to diminish over time. At the age of six he left home and was raised at special government-run school for the blind even though he could see pretty well at that time. He was never close with his family and saw his parents and six brothers and sisters only on holidays if even then. Some analysts believe his problems can be traced back to feelings of abandonment he felt in regards to his family.

At the school for the blind Asahara was remembered as bully who broke a classmate's eardrum and once threatened to burn the school. He used his eyesight to gain favors and power over those who couldn�t see. A former teacher at the school told Time, "Being able to see even a little is prestigious because blind children want to go out and have coffee in a tea room but can't go by themselves. They would say to [Asahara], 'I will buy you dinner. Why don't you take me out?'"

Shoko Asahara as a Young Man

Aum recruitment video At the school Asahara was trained to be an acupuncturist. After graduating from high school Asahara moved to Tokyo and spent much his early 20s attending cram schools in an effort to do well enough on the college entrance exams to get into Tokyo University, Japan's most prestigious school. Former cram school classmates described him as a bookworm especially interested in Buddhist doctrines and the works of Mao Tse-tung. After failing on several occasions to get into Tokyo University, Asahara decided he wouldn't go to any university at all. He supported himself by working as an acupuncturist.

At the age of 23, Asahara married a cram school classmate, a 19-year-old girl named Tomoko. The couple opened a oriental medicine and health food store and earned enough money to buy a home in a comfortable Tokyo suburb. In 1982, a year after opening the shop, Asahara was detained by police for 20 days and fined for selling a snake-oil-like potion made of orange peels called "Almighty Medicine." His shop later went bankrupt.

A few years after opening the health food store, Asahara and his wife began offering yoga classes augmented with Buddhist, Hindu and Christian doctrines. The origins of Aum can be traced back to the mid 1980s when Asahara worked as kind of fortuneteller and amateur psychologist and advised people to take his yoga classes, which he advertised by handing out flyers with a picture of himself �levitating� (the picture was taken by a follower while he was bouncing in the lotus mediation position in his apartment). The picture was published in magazines and helped attract future followers to the cult.

A lawyer who worked with Aum later told the Daily Yomiuri, �Masumoto is a very smart person. He knows well how to argue with others. He is good at reading minds and knows how to unsettle others.� In 1986 he began calling himself a guru. He took a small group of yoga enthusiasts to the Himalayas, where he claims he became the first Japanese person to attain nirvana.

Rise of the Aum Shinrokyo Cult

After his visit to the Himalayas, Asahara changed the name of his group of yoga enthusiasts from the Aum Associations of Mountain Wizards to Aum Shinrokyo (Aum Supreme Truth). He also changed his name from Chizuo Matsumoto to Shoko Asahara. The Aum Shinrokyo cult attracted many new members. By the end of 1988 it had 3,000 followers. In 1989, it was registered as a religion.

In the early 1990s Aum continued to grow, attracting followers in Sri Lanka, the United States and particularly Russia. The cult had a weekly television show on Moscow's 2x2 TV channel and paid $800,000 a year for air time on a Russian radio station to broadcast a program called "Soul of Truth." In 1992, cult members in white robes danced in front of the Kremlin and Asahara once preached before a crowd of 15,000 people in a Moscow sports stadium. By 1995, the cult had an estimated 30,000 followers in Russia.

In 1990, Aum fielded 25 political candidates in parliamentary elections in Japan. During the campaign, Aum members donned papier-m�ch� Asahara masks, chanted Asahara�s name, dressed in white robes and distributed campaign literature and balloons at Tokyo subway stations. The group had no political agenda other than an opposition to a sales tax and was badly defeated.

The election was viewed by some experts as a turning point for the cult, transforming it from a group of harmless religious nuts into a doomsday cult. Some members left the group. To convince the others to stay Asahara began telling his followers that a terrible catastrophe was imminent and took them to a remote island to escape the disaster. Nothing happened and the group returned to Japan but Asahara continued to preach that the end was near.

Aum Shinrokyo Beliefs and Practices

television interview Members of the Aum Shinrokyo cult believed in a mishmash of doctrines from established religions and New Age occults. The cult promises life after death in a reincarnated form. The Kobe earthquake on January 17th 1996 was regarded as sign that the end of the world was near.

Asahara sight deteriorated over the years and by 1993 he told his brother that he had become completely blind. Soon afterwards he began calling himself a "Supreme Saint," "Today's Christ," and "the Savior of the Century." One follower recalled, "When he found that I was carrying a picture of an Indian saint, he went berserk and I said should not respect anyone but him."

In his speeches, Asahara insisted that he would be killed by sarin nerve gas and that government efforts to crackdown on his movement would coincide with the end of the world sometime between 1997 and 2000. "It is now clear that my first death will be by poison gas, such as sarin." Three months after making the remark seven people were killed in a sarin gas attack in Matsumoto, a town in central Japan.

Asahara often lashed out against the United States, Jews and Freemasons and blamed many of the world's problems on sex and junk food. In his book Disaster Approaches the Land of the Rising Sun he wrote the end of the world would begin with a cloud of poison gas. The United States was identified as the beast in the New Testament�s Revelations and Asahara insisted it would likely be source of the gas attack.

During religious ceremonies, followers made offerings of bananas on pink altars. They always sat at a level below Asahara, who demanded that members of the cult show their respect by bowing and kissing his toe, and drinking his blood and bathwater. Only the most devoted members got a chance to meet Asahara face to face.

In an effort to achieve enlightenment, Aum Shinrokyo cult members starved themselves, took psychoactive drugs, immersed themselves in freezing cold and scalding hot water. Acolytes wore helmets covered with wires and electrodes that reportedly tuned them into Asahara's alpha brain wave activity.

Spending hours in scalding water was known as �thermal training.� The sect said it ended the practice in 2005 after a member died in a bathtub undergoing the procedure.

Aum Members

New recruits were required to take a vow of chastity, cut of ties with their families and turn over their property, money, credit cards, passports and personal seals to the cult. One member said Aum Shinrokyo members had "no right to speak out" and "could only do as they were told."

Asahara once said his followers were idiots. Members donated as much as a half million dollars each and small business such as noodle shops, health clubs, discount computer outlets, and even a babysitting service were started up by the cult.

Followers gave out invitations at subway stations for free yoga classes. People that showed up were taught how to breath and mediate and shown animated films of Shoko and footage of him levitating in the air, flying from place to place and passing through walls, along with video of followers approaching him in see-through robes and kissing his feet.

Aum Shinrokyo cult members were prohibited from having sex. The only books they were allowed to read were books by Asahara. The cult manufactured its own LSD and frequently used it in meditation sessions along with doing thiopental (the truth drug).

Aum Initiations and Torture

Nearly all members went through a tortuous indoctrination except for the best-educated members who were valued for their knowledge and given privileges. Police suspect that several members died during cult rituals. Hidetoshi Takahashi, a former member who said he joined the cult because he was interested in Buddhism and wanted to join a group "that put religion into reality," said he believed that the tortuous rituals were used to sort out the true believers from those who were less committed.

Describing a "Christ initiation," the cult�s highest form of indoctrination, Takahashi said, he and 50 other followers gathered in a room with Asahara, drank a sweet liquid from a wine goblet and were sequestered in individual meditation cells. "Within five minutes," he told Time, "I was tripping on what I think was probably LSD."

"I heard people screaming and kicking the walls and door," Takahashi told Time. "When they let me out 12 hours later, it was like a scene in a mental hospital. I saw several unconscious people who had actually bitten into their wrists and were covered with blood." Afterward Takahashi said he was immersed in water so hot it burned his skin. Takahashi apparently passed the test with high marks, He was given a high position in the cult and put in charge of project to predict earthquakes.

Asahara demanded total obedience from his followers. Members were forced to enure hard labor, hung upside down, forced to drink salt water until they vomited and fed near-starvation diets consisting of bowls of instant noodles, three hard biscuits or a bowl of boiled vegetables. Deserters were drugged, tortured and even killed.

Aum Takes on a Sinister Character and Begins Killing People

Internal troubles are believed to have occurred around 1988 when a male Aum follower was drowned by having his face held underwater in a bathtub at a facility in Shizuoka Prefecture. Aum members are believed to have tried to cover up the case by burning his body. The case is believed to be the start of a series of crimes committed by the cult. [Source: Yomiuri Shimbun, June 5, 2012]

�Aum then murdered 21-year-old follower Shuji Taguchi, who tried to leave the cult after he was involved in the abandonment of the body of the drowned man. In November 1989, Aum members killed 33-year-old lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto and his family. Sakamoto was the leader of a group working for the families of people who had joined Aum. The families were seeking the return of their relatives. [Ibid]

One member, Kotari Ochida, was reportedly killed by other members in 1993 while Asahara looked on. The cult member who led the execution said he handcuffed and tied a rope around the victim's neck and carried out the execution on Asahara orders. "I thought if I didn't kill him, I might be killed, so I couldn't help doing it,� he said.

�The cult killed seven people in Matsumoto in June 1994 with sarin gas. In February 1995, Aum kidnapped Kiyoshi Kariya, 68, a chief clerk at the Meguro notary public office in Shinagawa Ward, Tokyo, and killed him by giving him a massive dose of anesthetics that induced a heart attack. The Tokyo sarin gas attack occurred the following month. Thirteen people died and more than 6,000 people were injured after the gas was released on five subway trains arriving at the Kasumigaseki Station. [Yomiuri Shimbun, Op Cit]

Aum Murders

Members believed that committing crimes to defend the cult was justifiable. It is believed that at least 20 Aum Shinrokyo members who rebelled or tried to leave the cult were killed. Their bodies were burned in a microwave crematorium, the bones were pulverized and the dust thrown away.

The first Aum-related death was an accident that occurred to one of its members at the cult�s compound. The body was secretly incinerated. Members of the cult worried that if news of the death got out it would undermine the reputation of the cult. When one member of the group who knew about the death asked if he could leave the cult he was murdered in February 1989 out of concern he might reveal information about the accidental death.

Aum began targeting people it viewed as threats after some negative articles were printed about the group. In November 1989 six cult members raided the house of Tsutsumi Sakamoto, an attorney who denounced the cult in a television interviews and refused to apologize or retract his statements. The cult members strangled Sakamoto and his wife, smothered their one-year-old baby and rolled up the bodies in futons and buried them in mountain graves. The bodies were never found.

An Aum badge was found at the apartment of Sakamoto and his family and police believed the cult may have been involved in their murder but police did not investigate the cult until after the sarin gas attack, The three Aum members charged with murdering the family were not arrested until September 1995.

A notary, who tried to prevent his wealthy sister from donating large sums of money to the cult, also disappeared. He was grabbed by four young men in a Mitsubishi van, which was later found with traces of the notary�s blood.

Aum Shinrokyo Subway Poison Gas Attack

sarin gas attack On March 22, 1995, sarin, a lethal nerve gas invented gas invented by the Nazis during World War II, was released by Aum members on three Tokyo subway trains during the morning rush hour. The attack left 12 dead, 3,807 seriously injured and sickened 6,300 others. One victim who stayed in a train for about 40 minutes without realizing what had happened said he still had shuddered headaches and weight loss 15 years after the attack. Another victim died in 2008 after spending 14 years in a coma.

The Tokyo subway attack was reportedly intended by Aum to "set off massive confusion in the Tokyo area" and divert the attention of the police who were believed to be planning a raid of the cult's headquarters. It was also apparently an effort by cult members to spark the cataclysmic Armageddon that Asahara had predicted and "purify" Japan through global violence.

The last major terrorist attack in Japan before the 1995 Aum subway gassing was a bomb detonated by in a radical leftist group in 1974 in the central Tokyo business district that killed eight people and injured nearly 400.

The poison gas was placed in containers disguised as school lunch boxes and soft-drink containers. It was released simultaneously in five subway cars on three trains heading towards Kasumigaseki, an area of Tokyo where most of the top government agencies have their offices. If the trains hadn�t stopped when the gas was released they all would have arrived at Kasumigaseki station between 8:09am and 8:14am.

Aum leaders gave instructions to perfume the sarin gas, saying "If it smells good like flowers, people will want to inhale it." It has been calculated that if full-strength sarin had been used and disseminated more efficiently, tens of thousands might have been killed.

One of the perpetrators wore sun glasses and s surgical mask (not uncommon in Asia) and boarded the eighth car of a train on the Hibiya line. According to witnesses, he started messing around with a package wrapped in newspapers almost immediately after he boarded the train. At the next stop he set the package on the floor and got off the train. The package started releasing a foul-smelling liquid.

The members of the cult that carried out the crime were reportedly given rice cakes and juice as a reward by Asahara who told them, "Mediate. And chant ten thousand times the phrase, 'This is good, with the blessing of the guru, the great god Shiba and al the victors of truth."

Tokyo Subway Attack Victims

sarin gas attack An Irishman who boarded the Hibuya line train told Time that the package released a liquid that formed "a pool of oily water on the floor. I noticed this quite offensive smell that I can't really describe."

About 11 minutes after the man boarded the train the commuters on the train panicked. An Austrian student in the car told Time, "Everyone just ran off, and I didn't know what was going on. Someone yelled, 'It's gas!'" A man seen lying unconscious next to the puddle was one of the 12 victims.

"I saw a dozen people on the platform who had either collapsed or were on their knees unable to stand up," photographer Nobuo Serizawa told Time. "One man was thrashing around on the floor like a fish out of water."

Victims coughed violently, choked and staggered. Tears streamed from their eyes. Speaking became difficult. Some were temporarily blinded; some foamed at the mouth; others vomited. The worst victims were rigid and bled from their mouths and noses. Emergency squads arrived at the scene of the five affected subway stations within minutes. Victims wisked away to the hospital were treated with atropine, a sarin antidote.

Two of the dead were station attendants at Kasumigaseki Station. Kasumasa Takahashi, a 50-year-old salaryman, entered a subway car filled with poison gas and picked up a 6-inch-high package spewing out the foul-smelling stuff and wrapped it in newspaper and carried it to the platform. As he reached down to mop up some drops that leaked on the platform with his handkerchief he lost consciousness. Regarded as hero, Takahashi died later in the hospital.

Some survivors of the gas attack still have posttraumatic stress disorders and breathing and health problems. Some victims are is very sorry shape. One woman is bedridden and for all intents and purposes a vegetable. Another was still in bed in a coma as of December 2006.

A law enacted in 2008 provides up to �30 million in compensation to each Aum victim and bereaved family. A total of 5,958 people applied for government aid for victims. As of October 2010, �2.74 billion had been paid to 5,784 of these applicants.

Aum victims received �1.6 billion collectively in assistance payments from the government. Individual victims or their families are eligible for government benefits that range from between $1,000 and $300,000. As of 2009, only 17.3 percent of 6,600 people eligible had applied for the benefits.

Aum Shinrokyo and Chemical and Biological Weapons

sarin gas attack clips Among the information leaked to press during the trial of Shoko Asahara was that cult planned to kill thousands by spraying sarin over Tokyo with a helicopter; that it attempted to purchase nuclear weapons and develop germ-warfare weapons; and it planned to set up an Aum Shinrokyo theocracy by assassinating the Japanese Emperor and spraying LSD mist on Tokyo politicians.

Aum Shinrokyo reportedly had connections with the yakuza and North Korea, and manufactured weapons and illegal drugs. Members of the cult reportedly received weapons training and learned how to make sarin from a Russian special-forces squad. In 1992, Aum purchased a machine factory and used it to make parts for AK-47s. Memos obtained by investigators indicated that the cult had plans to buy tanks and submarines from Russia and tried to purchase a laser interferometer (a laser welding machine) and other sophisticated devises.

Sarin is an odorless highly- lethal nerve gas invented by the Nazis during World War II and used in a deadly subway attack in Japan. It can be sprayed from the air or dispersed from the ground and fired in artillery shells. It penetrates through the skin, eyes and respiratory system, and blocks transmissions of impulses through the central nervous system, causing convulsions, respiratory paralysis and death. Early symptoms include a runny nose, severe headaches, chest tightness, drooling, sweating and nausea. A lethal doses in 1,700 milligrams on the skin and 70 milligrams inhaled.

Aum Shinrokyo owned a sheep ranch in Australia where it tested nerve gas and tried to mine uranium. It purchased nerve gas testing equipment from Russia and tried to buy laser equipment and gas masks from the United States. A medical team from Aum was sent to Zaire to investigate the outbreak of the Ebola virus that occurred there, obtain samples of the virus, and investigate the possibility of using the virus in biological weapons. Aum members had also looked into using smallpox and yellow fever in bio-weapons. It tried to synthesize green mamba venom, and made efforts to cultivate the anthrax and botulism virus.

In April 1990, cult members sprayed botulism germs (the strongest known toxins against humans) from three trucks that drove through the streets of greater Tokyo. No one got sick because the germs dispersed and quickly died. The members then switched their attention to anthrax because it remains potentially dangerous for a much longer time.

Events Before the Tokyo Subway Attack

In June, 1994, seven people were killed in a sarin gas attack in Matsumoto, a town in central Japan. More that 200 others were sickened, including three judges involved in a court case against the cult related to a land dispute.

Asahara reportedly said, �Spray sarin at the court (in Matsumoto) and find out if it really works.� Aum radio broadcasters said that sarin gas had been used in Matsumoto attacks but didn't reveal that Aum used it.

On March 5, 1995, more than 10 people were taken to the hospital complaining of eye and respiratory pain after inhaling mysterious fumes in a train car in Yokohama, near Tokyo. The source of the fumes was never very found. On March 15, 1995, three vapor-emitting attache cases are discovered at a Tokyo subway station, each contain three tanks with an unknown liquid and small battery-powered fans. Similar parts are later discovered at a Aum Shinrokyo facility.

More Violence Associated with Aum Shinrokyo

sarin gas attack On March 30, 1995 Takaji Kumimatsu, head of the National Police Agency, was shot and seriously wounded by an unidentified gunman. Aum denied involvement but around the same time the news media received anonymous calls threatening more violence unless investigation of the cult were stopped. Kumimatsu survived the shooting. See Police in Japan

On April 23, Hideo Murai, head of Aum�s "Science Ministry," was stabbed to death by a self-described rightist in front of reporters, photographer, television cameras and police. Suspected of being the mastermind behind the production the poison gas, Murai was being questioned by police about the cult's activities. Photographs of the dying cult members were displayed all over the world and television footage of the stabbing was showed in slow motion over and over again on Japanese television. Murai tied from a wound that penetrated his liver. His last words were, "I am innocent." The man who killed Murai said he committed the murder to preserve the honor of Emperor Akihito.

The Aum Shinrokyo cult was also linked to a letter bomb sent to Tokyo Governor Yukio Asoshima's office in May, 1995. In June, 1995 a member of Aum Shinrokyo squirted poison over an a man trying to kill him. Another member tried to hijack a plane with an ice pick.

In 1999, the sister of gas attack victim, who had sued the cult, was kidnapped. Her kidnappers said the woman would be released if the suit was dropped. The woman was released unhurt.

Other Poison Gas Attacks in Japan

On April 19, 1995 chaos broke out at a Yokohama subway station when an unidentified foul-smelling gas was released. About 500 people are taken to the hospital with cough fits, stinging eyes and dizziness but nobody was seriously hurt.

On April 23, a "copycat" attack occurs in a Yokohama shopping center. Twenty-four people were sent to the hospital with stinging eyes and sore throats. Police were unable to identify the gas or the source. Aum denied involvement.

On May 5, a serious disaster was averted when a policeman extinguishes two bags of burning chemicals placed near a ventilation duct in a men's room at Shinjuku station, one of Tokyo�s main train station. If the chemicals from the bag had combined they could have produced enough hydrocyanic gas to kill at least 10,000 people in seconds.

Ex-Prosecutor: 'Aum Made Preparations to Topple the Government'

The Aum Supreme Truth cult made plans to topple the Japanese government and a may have succeeded in taking power for a short period by committing mass murder in Tokyo with 70 tons of deadly sarin gas and 1,000 automatic rifles, a former Supreme Court justice said in an interview with The Yomiuri Shimbun.[Source: Yomiuri Shimbun, November 23, 2011]

Tatsuo Kainaka, who led investigations on Aum-related crimes as deputy chief prosecutor at the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office before becoming a Supreme Court justice, told Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer Akihiro Ishihara that after the sarin gas attack in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture the cult destroyed part of its Satian No. 7 facility, where sarin gas was manufactured, in Kamikuishikimura to disguise the building as an authentic religious facility, and stopped sarin production. At that time, the cult was planning to overthrow the government. The group planned to commit mass murder by aerially spraying 70 tons of sarin gas around the Kasumigaseki area and the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. Then, amid the confusion, Aum followers armed with automatic rifles would take control of the capital, according to the plan. Mass production of sarin was supposed to start after the Matsumoto attack.

The cult bought a helicopter for spraying sarin, and succeeded in making a prototype of an automatic rifle. They had trained their followers. If the plan had been actually carried out, Aum could have controlled the capital, perhaps even for a few days. At that time, the National Police Agency was the only law enforcement organization with information linking Aum with sarin gas.

Raids on Aum Shinrokyo Facilities

On March 22, some 2,500 police officers began making raids at 25 Aum Shinrokyo facilities located around the country. More than one thousand police descended on the Aum Shinrokyo commune in the Mt. Fuji foothills.

Hours before the raid, Asahara broadcast a two-minute appeal to followers, saying "The time has come for you to help me" and signed off with the plea, "Let's die without any regrets." In a video at the cult's 36 branches, Asahara said he had been the target of a poison gas attack orchestrated by the United States.

Police approached the main facilities at the Mt. Fuji commune with caged canaries to detect poison gas. Inside the commune investigators found 50 malnourished cult members laying on blankets in small cubicles. The members said they were fasting voluntarily. Malnourished members were taken to the hospital.

Investigators found "several tens of liters" of sarin gas in a secret laboratory. Only 10 liters were used in the subway attacks. Most of the poison gas was reportedly destroyed to cover up the evidence. The raids uncovered a Russian-made military helicopter, 22 pounds of gold, stacks of cash worth $7.9 million, gun parts, chemicals used to make explosives and evidence of biological weapons.

The chemical lab at the Mt. Fuji commune was hidden behind an enormous Styrofoam relief of the Hindu god Shiva. Over the next several weeks, police discovered tons of chemicals such as sodium cyanide, sodium fluoride, isopropyl alcohol and acetonitrile, which one newspaper estimated could produce enough poison gas to kill 4.2 million people. People living around the commune had reported leaves suddenly turning brown on trees and strange odors.

Ex-Prosecutor: 'Aum Made Preparations to Topple the Government'

Image Sources: YouTube

Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Daily Yomiuri, Times of London, Japan National Tourist Organization (JNTO), National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton�s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

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Last updated August 2012

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