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Anonymous
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 05, 2002 - 8:10 pm: | 
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Thursday, 13 December, 2001, 07:48 GMT
Death sentence on Aum leader upheld
Okazaki left the cult before the Tokyo gas attack
A court in Japan has upheld the death sentence against a co-founder of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo, for the murder of four people.
Kazuaki Okazaki, 41, was convicted in 1998 for killing an anti-sect lawyer, his wife and baby son, and a cult member who had tried to leave after witnessing an earlier killing...
The death sentence passed on Okazaki was the first for a member of Aum - the group which in 1995 released deadly Sarin nerve gas in the Tokyo subway, killing 12 people and injuring thousands of others.
The sect has now renounced violence and renamed itself Aleph.
In the appeal, Okazaki's lawyers had argued he was under "mind control" by Aum's main founder, Chizuo Matsumoto - better known by his pseudonym Shoko Asahara - who is still on trial...
The court rejected that argument.
...In 1989 Okazaki and five other Aum members, on the order of their leader, had entered the Yokohama home of lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto, then 33, and killed him, his wife Satoko, 29, and one-year-old son Tatsuhiko.
That same year Okazaki also murdered 21-year-old Shuji Taguchi, who had tried to leave the cult after witnessing an earlier killing...
Found at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_1707000/1707955.stm |
Anonymous
| | Posted on Monday, March 04, 2002 - 1:56 pm: |
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Recommending a new e book on defeating cult terrorism in Japan.
Aum Shinrikyo-Japan's Unholy Sect
About the book.
On the 26th of March 1995, sarin gas was released in a Tokyo subway
station crammed with morning rush hour commuters and all hell broke loose.
In the aftermath of anguish, death, painful injuries and broken lives, the
deadly action was traced back to a cult called Aum Shinrikyo.
What lay behind this ferocious lashing the cult had given to the orderly,
uncluttered society Japan was so proud of? What dark sinister secrets lay
behind the walls of the Aum Shinrikyo compound in Kamikuishiki?
Tsutsumi Sakamoto, a Yokohama lawyer took up the challenge of finding
answers to these questions and one cold , gray November morning in 1995,
the young attorney, his wife and ten month old son disappeared without a
trace;
This is the chilling story of how a young lawyer sacrificed his life and
that of his poignantly young family to stem the reign of terror of the
cult's guru, Shoko Asahara.
He spoke out from his lonely hillside grave and was heard at last. He had
died to right a social wrong , the rest was up to the
living…
This book is available by acessing website;
http://www.kimura-books.com/aum/book.htm
Thank you. |
Anonymous
| | Posted on Monday, March 25, 2002 - 10:36 am: |
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Monday March 25, 4:44 PM
Japanese Aum cultist gets 10 years for killing fellow disciple
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.
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/020325/1/2myvl.html |
Anonymous
| | Posted on Monday, March 25, 2002 - 11:23 am: |
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Posted on Mon, Mar. 18, 2002
Doomsday cult smaller, still alarming
By Steve Goldstein
Inquirer Staff Writer
TOKYO - 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.***
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.********
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 alive."
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."****
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.*****
Aleph still follows many of Asahara's teachings, he said, although they have renounced the guru's dictates regarding justifiable homicide.*****
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/2883580.htm |
Anonymous
| | Posted on Monday, March 25, 2002 - 7:16 pm: |
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Booklet on trial of Russian AUM cultists
Firm publishes booklet on trial of Russian AUM cultists (March 2002)
Japan Sea Network Ltd., a business consulting firm based in the Sea of Japan coast city of Niigata, has published a booklet of trial records of four Russian members of the AUM Shinrikyo cult who were found guilty in January for plotting terrorism in Japan to free their leader Shoko Asahara, it said Monday.
The booklet includes questioning from the 15-day trial at a local court in Vladivostok.
A Russian employee of the firm attended the trial and Japanese workers translated the proceedings.
The booklet also contains an interview with the main cultist, who was sentenced to an eight-year prison term for going over the Imperial Palace and the Diet in Tokyo to carry out terrorist attacks and planning bombings in northern Japan cities such as Sapporo and Aomori.
One official of the company, which has offices in Niigata and Vladivostok and publishes magazines about Russia, said, "We tried to provide objective information about the trial for Japanese people, who have a strong interest in them."
AUM, which had a small number of followers in Russia, renamed itself Aleph in January 2000. It carried out a deadly gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995.
The price of the booklet is 5,000 yen. (37.50 USD)
A Russian court has handed down sentences for five members of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult who planned to bomb Japanese cities to free their cult leader (January 2002) |
Anonymous
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 27, 2002 - 7:02 am: |
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A documentarian refocuses on Aum Shinrikyo
By rights, Tatsuya Mori's video documentary "A2" should be shown on television, preferably on NHK, without commercial interruptions. But like its predecessor, "A," it will only be screened theatrically. The positive response it received when it was shown at last September's Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (where it won the Audience Prize) showed that "A2" works perfectly well on the big screen, but theatrical release severely limits the potential audience for a work whose main purpose is revelatory.
Sitting in the restaurant of the Tokyo Broadcasting System (TBS) in Akasaka, Mori explains that before he started shooting "A," Fuji TV agreed to air the finished product, but that two days into production "they started making a lot of conditions that I couldn't accept, so that was off." Nevertheless, he completed it and then shopped it around to all the networks, including NHK, but no one would air it. Consequently, it has only been shown at festivals and in movie theaters. "For 'A2' I didn't even think about television."
Considering the subject of the two documentaries -- the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo -- it's perhaps easy to understand the TV industry's hesitation. Aum, the group that released sarin gas in the Tokyo subway system in March 1995, killing 12 people and sickening scores of others, remains a very difficult topic for many Japanese. The cult's founder and leader, Shoko Asahara, and most of the group's high-ranking members were indicted for murder and other crimes. The trials are expected to continue for years, but the cult, which has changed its name to Aleph, carries on, despite efforts by both the authorities and private citizens to make it go away.
In 1996, Mori received permission from the cult to tape its day-to-day activities. His methodology is of the classic fly-on-the-wall type, punctuated by occasional pointed questions. The result is a startlingly frank and disarmingly relaxed look at a group many people believe is the Devil's Own.
"Actually, the networks were interested," he explains, "because no one [in the film industry] had ever looked inside Aum before. But I thought it was important to air it as a complete documentary, and all they wanted was to use isolated footage for news purposes."
As he explained to the audience in Yamagata, Mori had not planned a sequel, since he says he was "quite satisfied" with "A." However, following the government's passage of surveillance laws aimed at group activities, specifically Aum's, and in light of the realization that no community in Japan will allow the cult to reside within its borders, he paid a visit to the headquarters of the group, and "things just seemed to happen, so I started taping again."
"A" focused mainly on Aum's new PR spokesman, Hiroshi Araki, who essentially became the interface between the world and the cult during its most embattled period, after the previous spokesman, the charismatic Fumihiro Joyu, went to jail for a minor property-related crime that had nothing to do with the sarin attack (he has since completed his sentence and returned to the cult). The quiet, thoughtful Araki seemed ill-suited to the task of standing up to the often belligerent media, and it was this aspect that first drew Mori to him as a subject. Much of the documentary consists of one-to-one conversations between Mori and Araki, who turns out to be articulate and even philosophical about his position.
"A2" is, in many ways, an even more extraordinary work than "A." It is certainly more accomplished and wide-ranging, covering a handful of Aleph members in depth and chronicling the group's struggle to survive.
"My purpose with 'A2' was different," he says. "Rather than explain Aum, I wanted to show how Japanese society has deteriorated. If I focused on Araki, it would have been 'A' all over again. But in the end, I do return to him, because he's the one person in whom I can invest my emotions. He understands me."
"A2" is also much more revealing about the specific dynamics that inform the general attitude toward the cult. These dynamics, it turns out, go beyond the crimes committed in the cult's name. If the centerpiece of "A" was the shocking footage of plainclothes policemen provoking Aum members outside their offices ("When I screened it in Berlin, the audience was convinced I had staged that; they couldn't believe it was real"), the most significant episode in "A2" is of a visit by Aleph officials to Yoshiyuki Kono, who had been the prime suspect of both the media and the police in the poisoned-gas incident that killed six people in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, in 1994.
Following the Tokyo sarin attack a year later, it became apparent that Aum was responsible for the Matsumoto poisoning, but Kono's life had already been ruined by then. The Aleph members go to Kono's house to offer an official, though long overdue, apology. A TBS crew shows up at Kono's invitation and the various parties fall into disagreement on how best to proceed for the sake of the cameras. As with the extreme behavior of the police dustup in "A," the amazing thing about the apology contretemps isn't the pettiness and petulance on display (from every side), but the fact that Mori recorded it all.
Even scenes that do not involve the media point up how one-sided Aum coverage has been. Mori spent a lot of time at an Aleph training facility in Gunma Prefecture that was surrounded by local "observers" who were there to make sure the cult wasn't up to any funny business. Over several months, the followers and the observers became friends. When the observers left, the cult helped them dismantle their tents. One of the local leaders, with tears in his eyes, tells a departing Aleph member that he will miss him.
The segment is more absurd than it is touching, and the large audience that watched it in Yamagata laughed during many scenes, especially those involving rightwing nationalists, who both abhor the cult and identify with them as fellow social outcasts. "A2" shows how inconsequential Aleph really is and how irrational most people's fears of the group are.
In one skillfully edited sequence, Mori shifts back-and-forth between a parade of Chiba residents as they make their way to a house that Aleph is renting, and the handful of Aleph members inside the house. The demonstrators are thrown into confusion when the cultists invite them into the house to discuss their protest.
"We prefer to stay out here," the leader says after discussing the matter with his comrades. He then uses a bullhorn to demand that Aleph leave their neighborhood, and the demonstrators disperse, their little adventure finished.
In "A2," Aleph members are less notable for their devotion than for their awkwardness and lack of social skills. "We seem to attract a lot of depressives," one follower admits during an unguarded moment.
Fundamentally, the group promotes a complete separation from the material world, which means, ultimately, that followers must break all ties with family and friends. This aspect of the group's faith, the one that most disturbs the average Japanese, is at the center of the most powerful scene.
Araki agrees to meet an old high school friend who has become a newspaper reporter. They meet alone, on neutral ground, so to speak, and the ill feelings are palpable. Araki complains politely about the media's obsession with Aleph and asks point-blank how his friend could be a part of it. The reporter asks Araki how he could turn his back on his old friends. The reunion becomes a standoff rather than a reconciliation, a perfect reduction of the antagonism that exists between Aleph and the public at large.
Of course, the cult's infamous "training" is completely centered on this goal of transcending the material world, but most of the cultists seem clearly incapable of achieving it. Mori continually pesters them about their food, which is supposed to be bland. "This isn't that bad," one follower says hopefully, handing Mori a bowl of instant mashed potatoes. The director takes a spoonful and says, "It's absolutely revolting." The other followers giggle.
"I wanted people to see their everyday life," he says. "Most people don't realize that Aum members have everyday lives. When people see them eating, they are surprised: 'You mean, they actually eat food?' "
Nevertheless, Mori still thinks Aleph "is a potentially dangerous organization, since they are so pure and virtuous. But society in general has the same potential, especially right now, and I think we have to face up to that. The Japanese have a strong tendency to allow the group to think for them. I mean, more people died from AIDS as a result of callous official policies in the 1980s than those who died at the hands of Aum, which doesn't diminish what Asahara did, but it's something we need to think about."
"A2" is also a very personal document. Mori uses the filmmaking process to work out his own feelings, not only about Aleph but about the changes that have affected Japanese society since the sarin attack. In the final scene, the one in which he returns to Araki, Mori tells the young cultist that he believes Japan changed for the worse that day, its famous sense of well-being destroyed forever in one act of megalomania. Araki doesn't disagree.
In the light of Sept. 11, this idea, and the documentary as a whole, becomes more pertinent. "A2" was shown at a film festival in Damascus in November. "I wanted to screen it in an Islamic country. It's impossible to watch it and not think about the global situation right now. Some people at the festival said they believed that Americans might rethink their options if they saw it."
Perhaps, but most people are not comfortable with the kind of contradictions that "A2" presents so matter of factly, which is probably the main reason the TV networks have passed on it. As in all of his work, Mori wants to present his audience with as many different viewpoints as possible so that they are forced to draw their own conclusions.
Having carved out an exclusive niche as a documentarian of taboo subjects -- in addition to Aum, Mori has made videos and written books about songs banned for broadcast and the Buraku Liberation group -- he is viewed as a stubborn iconoclast, a reputation that he says misses the point.
"People ask me, 'How do you get permission to film these groups?' They think I pull strings or make threats, but all I do is ask, and they usually say yes. Most media people don't even ask, because they think they shouldn't cover them in the first place."
"A2" is currently showing at Box Higashi Nakano, (03) 5389-6780. Dialogue in Japanese. A retrospective of Mori's work is also playing as the late show.
The Japan Times: March 27, 2002 |
Anonymous
| | Posted on Saturday, May 25, 2002 - 5:24 pm: |
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Thursday, 23 May, 2002, 10:26 GMT 11:26 UK
Cult leader trial resumes in Japan
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 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. ***
His defence team is expected to submit "not guilty" pleas on all 13 charges. Their submissions are expected to take about a year.***
ex http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_2004000/2004000.stm |
Anonymous
| | Posted on Saturday, June 08, 2002 - 7:06 pm: |
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Setagaya to submit `no Aum' ordinance
The Asahi Shimbun
Tokyo's Setagaya Ward will submit an ordinance to its assembly next week to regulate the activities of groups like Aum Shinrikyo, the cult accused of indiscriminate murder through sarin gas and other attacks.
About 90 Aum disciples live in the ward, one of the capital's most sought-after districts.
The ordinance, called ``Building a safe and secure town,'' will be presented to the assembly on Wednesday. An official said local authorities wanted some control over organizations ``that have received some form of punishment under the law.'' Aum Shinrikyo, founded by Chizuo Matsumoto, falls into that category.
When the ordinance is adopted, Setagaya Ward will be able to regulate the group's activities and, officials say, hopefully prevent any group behavior deemed harmful to residents.
The ordinance would allow the ward to canvass the opinion of residents about Aum Shinrikyo, since renamed Alelph, develop programs aimed at ensuring safe living conditions for residents, and subsidize citizen-organized protests against the group.
The ordinance, in effect, would allow Setagaya Ward authorities to muzzle Aum Shinrikyo.
While many residents of the ward welcome the move, some raised concerns about freedom of rights guaranteed under the Constitution.
Cult members began moving into Setagaya in December 2000. In January 2001, former spokesman Fumihiro Joyu became a resident after serving a prison term for perjury..(IHT/Asahi: June 7,2002)
http://www.asahi.com/english/national/K2002060700443.html |
Anonymous
| | Posted on Wednesday, June 26, 2002 - 5:43 pm: |
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Japanese cult leader sentenced to death
Wednesday, 26 June, 2002, 04:58 GMT 05:58 UK
A former leader of the Aum Shinrikyo, or Supreme Truth Cult, has been sentenced to death in Japan for his involvement in a series of murders, including the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo underground.
Tomomitsu Niimi, "home affairs minister" of the cult, was found guilty in seven murder cases and two attempted murder cases that took place between 1989 and 1995.
At the beginning of his trial in 1996, Niimi refused to enter pleas and pledged eternal loyalty to Aum guru Shoko Asahara, who is accused of masterminding the attack on the underground.
Niimi is since reported to have admitted to all the charges against him, except the one relating to the sarin gas attack, which killed 12 people and left thousands ill.
He allegedly said he was following Mr Asahara's orders and should not be sentenced to death.
Mr Asahara is still on trial for the attack on the underground.
Niimi was also found guilty of helping to organise the killing of lawyer Tsutsuni Sakamoto and his wife and son. Mr Sakamoto was one of the first to question the group's activities.
///
extracted from http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/asia-pacific/newsid_2066000/2066713.stm |
Anonymous
| | Posted on Sunday, October 13, 2002 - 4:13 pm: |
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Aum's Endo sentenced to death in sarin attacks
The Asahi Shimbun
Seiichi Endo, a senior chemist for the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult, was sentenced to death in Tokyo District Court on Friday for his role in making the sarin used in the cult's attacks and other crimes on Aum's behalf in 1994 and 1995.
In passing the death sentence, the court rejected assertions by his attorneys that he had been brainwashed into his actions by the cult.
Endo, 42, was indicted on five criminal counts, including murder and attempted murder in the June 27, 1994, sarin gas attack that killed seven people in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, and the March 20, 1995, sarin attack on Tokyo subways in which 12 people died and thousands were made ill.
Endo was a key member in a division of the cult involved in developing and making chemical and biological weapons and mind-altering drugs.
Endo and two others, Tomomasa Nakagawa, 39, and Masami Tsuchiya, 37, were accused of being the cult's principal sarin makers. Endo is the first among the three to be sentenced.
:::In ruling on the Matsumoto sarin attack, the court noted that Endo and other Aum members had taken sarin antitoxins with them when they set out to distribute the gas.
That, the court said, showed Endo was ``fully cognizant of the toxic nature of sarin and its fatal effect, and obviously had the intent to kill an unspecified number of people living in the vicinity.''
Eight other former senior Aum members have been sentenced to die, but all have appealed to higher courts.
The trial of Matsumoto and two others is still under way in district courts.(IHT/Asahi: October 12,2002)
see http://www.asahi.com/english/national/K2002101200253.html |
Anonymous
| | Posted on Sunday, January 26, 2003 - 7:37 pm: |
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Watch on Aum cult extended
The Aum Shinrikyo cult predictably objected to a Public Security Examination Commission decision Thursday to extend government surveillance of its activities for three more years beyond Feb. 1.
The doomsday cult will file suit in Tokyo District Court to nullify the extended surveillance, Aum officials said.
The extension was approved because the cult is deemed capable of carrying out more indiscriminate mass murder, in line with the doctrine of its founder, Chizuo Matsumoto, 47, who calls himself Shoko Asahara, commission officials said.
--- After deciding on the extension, the commission immediately notified the cult and the Public Security Investigation Agency, an affiliate of the Justice Ministry.
Matsumoto is on trial for murder and other crimes.
The watch is based upon the Diet's enactment of a 1999 law authorizing surveillance on groups implicated in indiscriminate mass murder.
A three-year watch on Aum was authorized in January 2000, and agency investigators and police have had access to cult facilities.
The cult must report its membership and assets every three months to the Public Security Investigation Agency.
The agency gave these reasons for extending surveillance:
* Matsumoto, accused mastermind of the two sarin attacks, still influences Aum activities.
* Matsumoto and five other cult leaders who carried out the sarin attacks are still Aum members; some are officers.
* Four Aum officers at the time of the attacks are still cult officers, including Fumihiro Joyu, now the Aum leader.
* Aum still embraces a dangerous doctrine that encourages murder.
* Evidence will show Aum is still dangerous and capable of indiscriminate mass murders.
* Aum retains its closed and deceptive character.
The agency said there are 88 Aum facilities operating in 16 prefectures.
see http://www.asahi.com/english/national/K2003012400339.html |
Anonymous
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 29, 2003 - 1:21 pm: |
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AUM uses sultry Net sirens to lure male members
NAGOYA -- AUM Shinrikyo, the doomsday cult responsible for the 1995 deadly gas attack on the Tokyo subway system, is getting women to use controversial Internet matchmaking sites to lure new men into the group, the Mainichi has learned.
Amorous AUM members from the cult's Nagoya base apparently pretend to be interested in meeting men's desires for female companionship, but instead use their seduction to get the men into the cult.
Aichi police's public safety officials say the cult has been using the lecherous lures since it began something of a comeback in the autumn of 2001. They are unaware of how many men the AUM sirens have lured into their clutches.
--- Police quoted a recent example of a man who used his mobile phone to respond to a message posted in a matchmaking site by a woman saying that she was lonely and wanted somebody to talk to. The woman replied and agreed to meet him.
When he turned up at the appointed time, there were two women waiting for him. The three went to a nearby cafe, where the women told him they were about to head off to a yoga class and invited him to join them.
The man went to the class, discovered that he enjoyed yoga and became a regular. The woman he originally contacted through the matchmaking site approached him and asked if he would like to meet Joyu. Shocked -- Joyu was a fixture on Japanese TV until his arrest in 1995 as he vehemently denied AUM involvement in the deadly subway gassing -- the man back off, only to relent when the woman told him that she felt an introduction to Joyu would allow him to study yoga at a more advanced level.
He was taken to a monthly meeting where the cult leader read sutras. He began attending these meetings without fail and became a member of the cult. He soon developed doubts about the authenticity of AUM's teachings, however, and left the group.
---
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20030129p2a00m0dm012001c.html |
Anonymous
| | Posted on Thursday, October 30, 2003 - 11:33 am: |
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Death for Japan cult member
Wednesday, 29 October, 2003
A former senior member of the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult has been sentenced to death for his part in a 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo underground and 10 other crimes.
Tomomasa Nakagawa, 41, was accused of helping to make the sarin gas, which killed 12 people and left thousands ill, and participating in other crimes led by the cult between 1989 and 1995.
His sentencing came a day before the start of a defence plea for the cult's former leader, Shoko Asahara, who also faces the death penalty.
,,,Nakagawa was also accused of taking part in a 1994 gassing in the central Japanese city of Matsumoto and of several attempted murders using cyanide fumes, VX gas, sarin and a letter bomb, Japan's Kyodo news agency said.
He became the 10th member of Aum to face the death penalty. None has so far been executed - the other nine members have filed appeals.
,,,A report compiled by the Justice Ministry's Public Security Investigation Agency said that Aum had about 650 live-in followers and some 1,000 outside believers, as of the end of December 2002.
Aum went bankrupt in 1996, after the arrest of its top leaders. It has since changed its name to Aleph and claims to have renounced violence under its new leader, Fumihiro Joyu.
But the Justice Ministry says that under Mr Joyu's leadership, the group continues to worship Asahara's "dangerous" teachings.
The group maintains 28 offices and 120 apartments in 17 prefectures throughout Japan and has 300 members in Russia, the 2002 report said.
The cult is said to use different names to offer yoga lessons and computer classes in order to finance its activities and recruit new members.
ex http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3223177.stm |
Anonymous
| | Posted on Friday, February 27, 2004 - 10:56 am: |
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Asahara's victims still suffer despite death ruling
Victims of AUM Shinrikyo's lethal crimes said the founder and ringleader Shoko Asahara deserved the death sentence handed down to him Friday, but added that their mental suffering would remain.
Yoshiyuki Kono, a resident in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, who reported AUM's sarin gassing in the city in 1994, heard of the ruling at his home.
"I was expecting the Tokyo District Court to sentence him to death," Kono, 54, said. "If he is discontent with the ruling, he should clearly express what he thinks in an appeal court."
Kono, whose wife has been bed-ridden since the sarin attack, added that Asahara, 48, as founder of the AUM cult, must tell all existing members to abandon any dangerous religious ideas.
Seiichi Takeuchi, 75, who headed an anti-AUM campaign in Kamikuishiki, Yamanashi Prefecture, where the cult constructed their living facilities, harshly criticized Asahara.
"Although I'm against the death penalty in general, Asahara's case is exceptional," Takeuchi said. "He hasn't spoken about his true intentions during the hearings and has never made an apology."
In Tokyo, relatives and friends of those who lost their lives as a result of crimes committed by AUM, including the high-profile sarin attack on the subway system in March 1995, were also furious at Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto.
A 44-year-old man, whose sister became bed-ridden after the Tokyo subway gassing, said, "I thought I saw a smirk on Matsumoto's face (during the ruling). He gave me the creeps."
Shizue Takahashi, wife of a subway worker who died at Kasumigaseki Station during the lethal gas attack, heard the ruling in the court after visiting her husband's grave.
"I came here with my husband's soul," Takahashi, 57, said. "I am satisfied that he was sentenced to hang." (Mainichi Shimbun, Japan, Feb. 27, 2004)
http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/news/20040227p2a00m0dm016000c.html |
bohica29 (bohica29)
New member
Username: bohica29
Post Number: 6
Registered: 5-2005
Posted From: 68.8.227.203
| | Posted on Monday, May 16, 2005 - 1:15 am: |
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Has anyone heard anything about Aum Shinrikyo's research into seismic weaponry? I can only find a single source for this research.
What I need: A good secondary or tertiary source on that story. Here's a good summary list I've found on the topic so far...
http://seismicweapon.blogspot.com/ |
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