When Aum Shinrikyo officially acknowledged for the first time in December 1999 that it was behind a spate of heinous crimes and apologized to the survivors, Hiroyuki Miyaguchi said he was relieved that suspicions he and other rank-and-file cultists harbored for years had finally been cleared up.
Miyaguchi, 38, even thought the apology would be a social turning point for Aum, which had not been forced to disband despite the arrests years earlier of its founder, Shoko Asahara, and many other top disciples on charges of committing the cult's murderous mayhem.
But he continued to wonder whether the heirs to Aum's helm were truly being sincere in their apology, because of the cult's mind-set of justifying everything its members did in the name of religion.