Japan on Wednesday marked the 29th anniversary of a fatal nerve gas attack on Tokyo's subway system by members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult.
About 20 Tokyo Metro staff and relatives of victims held a moment of silence at 8 a.m. at Kasumigaseki subway station on the Hibiya line to remember two former colleagues who died in the attack.
In all, 14 people died and about 6,300 were sickened after cult members released sarin in trains during co-ordinated rush-hour attacks on March 20, 1995.
Five train cars were attacked simultaneously on three separate subway lines (Hibiya, Chiyoda and Marunouchi), causing havoc at the stations and paralyzing the subway network in the capital.
Thirteen Aum members, including cult leader Shoko Asahara, were executed, while others are serving prison sentences. The last fugitive was arrested in 2012.
In what some believe was an attempt to divert the authorities that Asahara thought were closing in on his base in the foothills of Mount Fuji, he sent five teams of two people to attack the Tokyo subway.
Five adherents -- among them a senior medical doctor and several physicists -- dumped packages of sarin on busy trains, puncturing them with sharpened umbrella tips, before being driven away from a pre-determined station by their co-conspirators.
The nerve gas, so toxic that a single drop can kill a person, evaporated over the following minutes as thousands of unwitting commuters got on and off each train.
Staff and passengers were among the dead.
Many of those sickened only realized what had happened as their symptoms worsened throughout the day and news broadcasts began piecing events together.
Aum was never officially disbanded. It went bankrupt because of the massive damage payments it was forced to make to victims of its crimes.
Former members have continued under three different groupings with new names, such as Aleph.
Source:
japantoday.com, Staff, March 20, 2024
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