Aum Shinrikyo remains dangerous and continued surveillance of the cult is needed, Yukio Kakiage, head of the Justice Ministry's Public Security Investigation Agency, said Wednesday.
"I hope you will do everything possible to renew the surveillance on Aum Shinrikyo in line with a law regulating such groups," Kakiage told a gathering of public security bureau officials from around the country.
The law was enacted in December 1999 with the aim of restricting the activities of any organization that has committed "indiscriminate mass murder during the past 10 years." In effect, that narrows the scope down to Aum, whose members have been accused of carrying out the deadly sarin attack on the Tokyo subway system in 1995 and anther fatal nerve gas attack the previous year in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture.