Today the saga of Aum Shinrikyo — a doomsday cult that killed 13 Tokyo commuters and poisoned many others with sarin gas in 1995 — seems like something out of a bad manga. What could have possessed so many well-educated middle-class people, to follow ...
The Supreme Court has finalized its decision not to grant a retrial for Aum Shinrikyo cult founder Shoko Asahara, who is on death row for masterminding the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system among other charges, sources said Tuesday. The top court ...
Twenty years on, people are still trying to fathom why so many people — including youths from elite backgrounds — were drawn to a doomsday cult that carried out a deadly sarin gas attack in downtown Tokyo.
The fourth daughter of Aum Shinrikyo founder Shoko Asahara recently expressed regret over the sarin nerve gas attack the doomsday cult carried out on the Tokyo subway system on March 20, 1995. The gassing 20 years ago killed 13 people and left more than 6,000 ...
Ahead of the 20th anniversary of Aum Shinrikyo's deadly sarin attack in Tokyo, we talk to three people with intimate knowledge of the cult in a bid to find out how it was able to exert so much influence over its followers.
Prosecutors demand a seven-year term for former Aum Shinrikyo fugitive Naoko Kikuchi for her role the 1995 parcel bomb attack on Tokyo City Hall.
Former Aum Shinrikyo fugitive Naoko Kikuchi said Friday she had no idea that cult superiors had roped her into a plot to build and send a parcel bomb to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government headquarters in 1995. Kikuchi, 42, is pleading not guilty to charges of ...
Former Aum Shinrikyo cultist Naoko Kikuchi pleads not guilty to attempted murder for her role in the 1995 bombing of a Tokyo City Hall office.
Former Aum Shinrikyo fugitive Makoto Hirata is sentenced to nine years in prison for his role in the 1995 kidnapping and confinement of Tokyo notary Kiyoshi Kariya and two other crimes.
A condemned Aum Shinrikyo member testifies in the Tokyo District Court that fellow cultist Makoto Hirata had no foreknowledge of the 1995 bombing of a professor’s condominium.
Makoto Hirata, one of the last Aum Shinrikyo cultists yet to be tried, on Thursday played down his involvement in the 1995 kidnapping of a Tokyo notary, telling the Tokyo District Court in his first trial session that he only drove the getaway car ...
The wife of a condemned Aum Shinrikyo figure was arrested Wednesday for allegedly trying to forcibly recruit an acquaintance into Aleph, the cult's successor sect, Osaka police said. Yuki Niimi, 36, the wife of death-row inmate Tomomitsu Niimi, 49, is suspected of using her husband's ...
