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| Aleph | |
|---|---|
| アレフ | |
 | |
| Type | Japanese new religious movement |
| Classification | Buddhistnew religious movement |
| Orientation | Dharmic |
| Theology | Westernmillenarianism/millennialism (formerly) |
| Structure | Yoga meetings |
| Region | Japan |
| Founder | Shoko Asahara |
| Origin | 1987; 39 years ago (1987) Tokyo, Japan |
| Separations | Hikari no Wa (2008), Yamada's Club, Keroyon Club |
| Members | Approximately 1,650 (2011)[1] |
| Other names | Aum Shinrikyo (オウム真理教,Ōmu Shinrikyō) (1984–2007) |
Aleph (Japanese:アレフ,Hepburn:Arefu), better known by their former nameAum Shinrikyo (オウム真理教,Ōmu Shinrikyō;lit. 'religion ofAum Supreme Truth'), is aJapanese new religious movement anddoomsday cult founded byShoko Asahara in 1987. It carried out the deadlyTokyo subway sarin attack in 1995 and was then found to have been responsible for theMatsumoto sarin attack the previous year.
The group says that those who carried out the attacks did so secretly, without their plans being known to other executives and ordinary believers. Asahara insisted on his innocence in a radio broadcast relayed from Russia and directed towardJapan.[2]
On 6 July 2018, after exhausting all appeals, Asahara and six followers on death row were executed as punishment for the 1995 attacks and other crimes.[3][4] Six additional followers were executed on 26 July.[5] At 12:10 AM, on New Year's Day 2019, at least nine people were injured (one seriously) whena car was deliberately driven into crowds celebrating the new year onTakeshita Street in Tokyo. Local police reported the arrest of Kazuhiro Kusakabe, the suspected driver, who allegedly admitted to intentionally ramming his vehicle into crowds to protest his opposition to the death penalty, specifically in retaliation for the execution of the aforementioned Aum cult members.
Aum Shinrikyo, which split into Aleph andHikari no Wa in 2007, had already beenformally designated a terrorist organization by several countries, includingRussia,[6]Canada,[7]Japan,[8]France,Kazakhstan, and theEuropean Union.[9] It was previously designated by theUnited States as a terrorist organization until 2022, when theState Department determined the group to be largely defunct.[10]
ThePublic Security Intelligence Agency considered Aleph and Hikari no Wa to be branches of a "dangerous religion"[11] and it announced in January 2015 that they would remain under surveillance for three more years.[12] The Tokyo District Court canceled the extension to surveillance of Hikari no Wa in 2017 following legal challenges from the group, but continued to keep Aleph under watch.[13] The government appealed the cancellation, and in February 2019, the Tokyo High Court overturned the lower court's decision, reinstating the surveillance, citing no major changes between Aum Shinrikyo and Hikari no Wa.[14]
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The movement "evolved out of a yoga school founded by Asahara Shoko in the Shibuya district of Tokyo in February 1984".[15] The movement was known asŌmu Shinsen no Kai (オウム神仙の会,"AumHeavenly Sage Association") and steadily grew in the following years. It gained official status as areligious organization in 1989 and attracted a considerable number of graduates from Japan's elite universities, thus being dubbed a "religion for the elite".[16]
Shinri Party (Truth Party) 真理党 | |
|---|---|
| Leader | Shoko Asahara |
| Founded | 1989 |
| Dissolved | 2018 |
| Ideology | World salvation based on the teachings of Aum Shinrikyo |
| Candidates in the1990 Japanese general election | 25 |
Although Aum was, from the beginning, considered controversial in Japan, it was not initially associated with serious crimes. It was during this period that Asahara became obsessed withBiblical prophecies. Aum's public relations activities included publishing comics and animated cartoons that attempted to tie its religious ideas to popularanime andmanga themes, including space missions, powerful weapons, world conspiracies, and the quest for ultimate truth.[17] Aum published several magazines includingVajrayana Sacca andEnjoy Happiness, adopting a somewhat missionary attitude.[16]
Isaac Asimov's science fictionFoundation Trilogy was referenced "depicting as it does an elite group of spiritually evolved scientists forced to go underground during an age of barbarism to prepare themselves for the moment...when they will emerge to rebuild civilization".[18] Lifton posited that Aum's publications used Christian and Buddhist ideas to impress what he considered to be the more shrewd and educated Japanese who were not attracted to boring, purely traditionalsermons.[19]: 258
Advertising and recruitment activities, dubbed the "Aum Salvation plan", included claims of curing physical illnesses with health improvement techniques, realizing life goals by improving intelligence and positive thinking, and concentrating on what was important at the expense of leisure. This was to be accomplished by practicing ancient teachings, accurately translated from originalPalisuttas (these three were referred to as "threefold salvation"). These efforts resulted in Aum becoming one of the fastest-growing religious groups in Japan's history.[citation needed]
David E. Kaplan and Andrew Marshall claim that its practices remained secret. Initiation rituals often involved the use ofhallucinogens, such asLSD. Religious practices often involved extremely ascetic practices claimed to be "yoga". These included everything from renunciants being hung upside down to being givenshock therapy.[20]
In the early days, Aum was able to recruit a variety of people ranging from bureaucrats to personnel from theJapanese Self-Defense Forces and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police.[21]
| Aum affair | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
 Japan | Aum Shinrikyo | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Tomiichi Murayama | Shoko Asahara  | ||||||
| Units involved | |||||||
| MPD Riot Police Unit 1st Airborne Brigade civilian protesters | Armed believers | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 27 killed 6,000+ injured | 1 killed 192+ arrested (later 13 executed) | ||||||
Thecult started attracting controversy in the late 1980s with accusations of deception of recruits, holding cult members against their will, forcing members to donate money, and murdering a cult member who tried to leave in February 1989.[22][23]
In October 1989, the group's negotiations withTsutsumi Sakamoto, ananti-cult lawyer threatening alawsuit against them, which could potentially bankrupt the group, failed. In the same month, Sakamoto recorded an interview for a talk show on the Japanese TV stationTBS. The network then had the interview secretly shown to the group without notifying Sakamoto, intentionally breakingprotection of sources. The group then pressured TBS to cancel the broadcast. The following month, Sakamoto, his wife and his child went missing from their home inYokohama. The police were unable to resolve the case at the time, although some of his colleagues publicly voiced their suspicions of the group. It was not until after the1995 Tokyo attack that they were found to have beenmurdered and their bodies dumped in separate locations by cult members.[24][25]
Kaplan and Marshall allege in their book that Aum was also connected with such activities asextortion. The group, authors report, "commonly took patients into its hospitals and then forced them to pay exorbitant medical bills".[20]
The cult is known to have consideredassassinations of several individuals critical of the cult, such as the heads of Buddhist sectsSoka Gakkai andThe Institute for Research in Human Happiness. After manga artistYoshinori Kobayashi began satirizing the cult, he was included on Aum's assassination list. An assassination attempt was made on Kobayashi in 1993.[26]
In 1991, Aum began to use wiretapping to getNTT uniforms/equipment and created a manual for wiretapping.[21]
In July 1993, cult members sprayed large amounts of liquid containingBacillus anthracis spores from a cooling tower on the roof of Aum Shinrikyo's Tokyo headquarters. However, their plan to cause ananthrax epidemic failed, likely because they used a vaccine strain ofBacillus anthracis that is generally regarded as nonpathogenic. The attack resulted in a large number of complaints about bad odors but no infections.[27]
At the end of 1993, the cult started secretly manufacturing the nerve agentsarin and, later,VX. Aum tested its sarin on sheep atBanjawarn Station, a remote pastoral property inWestern Australia, killing 29 sheep.[28]
On the night of 27 June 1994, the cult carried out achemical weapons attack against civilians when they released sarin in the central Japanese city ofMatsumoto,Nagano. With the help of a convertedrefrigerator truck, members of the cult released a cloud of sarin, which floated near the homes of judges who were overseeing a lawsuit concerning a real-estate dispute, which was predicted to go against the cult. ThisMatsumoto incident killed eight and harmed 500 more.[29] Police investigations focused only on an innocent local resident,Yoshiyuki Kouno, and failed to implicate the cult at the time. It was only after theTokyo subway attack that Aum Shinrikyo was discovered to be behind the Matsumoto sarin attack.[citation needed]
At the end of 1994, the cult broke into the Hiroshima factory of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, in an attempt to steal technical documents on military weapons such as tanks and artillery.[20]
In December 1994 and January 1995, Aum Shinrikyo memberMasami Tsuchiya synthesized 100 to 200 grams of VX which was used to attack three people. On 2 December, Noboru Mizuno, who was believed to have assisted former members of Aum, was attacked with syringes containingVX gas, leaving him in a serious condition.[30] Tadahito Hamaguchi, whom Asahara suspected was a spy, was attacked at 7:00 a.m. on 12 December 1994 on the street inOsaka byTomomitsu Niimi and another Aum member, who sprinkled the nerve agent on his neck. He chased them for about 100 yards (91 m) before collapsing, dying 10 days later without coming out of a deep coma. Doctors in the hospital suspected at the time he had been poisoned with anorganophosphate pesticide, the cause of death pinned down only after cult members arrested for thesubway attack in Tokyo in March 1995 confessed to the killing. Ethyl methylphosphonate, methylphosphonic acid, and diisopropyl-2-(methylthio) ethylamine were later found in the body of the victim; unlike the cases forsarin (Matsumoto incident and Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway), VX was not used for mass murder.[31][32][33]
On 4 January 1995, the cult tried to kill Hiroyuki Nagaoka, an important member of the Aum Victims' Society, a civil organization that protested against the sect's activities, in the same way.[31][34][35][33]In February 1995, several cult members kidnapped Kiyoshi Kariya, the 69-year-old brother of an escaped former member, from a Tokyo street and took him to a compound inKamikuishiki nearMount Fuji, where he was killed. His corpse was destroyed in amicrowave-powered incinerator and the remnants disposed of inLake Kawaguchi.[36] Before Kariya was abducted, he had been receiving threatening phone calls demanding to know the whereabouts of his sister, and he had left a note saying, "If I disappear, I was abducted by Aum Shinrikyo".[31]
Police made plans to simultaneously raid cult facilities across Japan in March 1995.[37] Prosecutors alleged Asahara was tipped off about this and that he ordered the Tokyo subway attack to divert police.[33]
Aum had also attempted to manufacture 1,000assault rifles, but only completed one.[38] According to the testimony of Kenichi Hirose at the Tokyo District Court in 2000, Asahara wanted the group to be self-sufficient in manufacturing copies of the Soviet Union's main infantry weapon, theAK-74;[39] one rifle was smuggled into Japan to be studied so that Aum couldreverse engineer and mass-produce the AK-74.[40] Police seized AK-74 components and blueprints from a vehicle used by an Aum member on April 6, 1995.[41]
On the morning of 20 March 1995, Aum members released abinary chemical weapon, most closely chemically similar to sarin, in a coordinated attack on five trains in theTokyo subway system, killing 13 commuters, seriously injuring 54, and affecting 980 more. Some estimates claim as many as 6,000 people were injured by the sarin. It is difficult to obtain exact numbers since many victims are reluctant to come forward.[42]
Prosecutors allege that Asahara was tipped off by an insider about planned police raids on cult facilities and ordered an attack in central Tokyo to divert police attention away from the group. The attack evidently backfired, and police conducted huge simultaneous raids on cult compounds across the country.[43]
Over the next week, the full scale of Aum's activities was revealed for the first time. At the cult's headquarters inKamikuishiki, on the foot ofMount Fuji, police found explosives, chemical weapons, and a RussianMi-17-1V military helicopter (4K-15214).[44] While the finding ofbiological warfare agents such asanthrax andEbolacultures was reported, those claims now appear to have been widely exaggerated.[45] There were stockpiles of chemicals that could be used for producing enough sarin to kill four million people.[46]
Police also found laboratories to manufacture drugs such asLSD,methamphetamine, and a crude form oftruth serum, a safe containing millions of U.S. dollars in cash and gold, and cells, many still containing prisoners. During the raids, Aum issued statements claiming that the chemicals were for fertilizers. Over the next six weeks, over 150 cult members were arrested for a variety of offenses. The media were stationed outside Aum's Tokyo headquarters on Komazawa Dori inAoyama for months after the attack and arrests, waiting for action and to get images of the cult's other members. On 30 March 1995, Takaji Kunimatsu, chief of theNational Police Agency, was shot four times near his house in Tokyo and was seriously wounded. While many suspected Aum involvement in the shooting, theSankei Shimbun reported thatHiroshi Nakamura is suspected of the crime, but nobody has been charged;[47] Nakamura would later confess to the crime.[48]
On 23 April 1995,Hideo Murai, the head of Aum's Ministry of Science, was stabbed to death outside the cult's Tokyo headquarters amidst a crowd of about 100 reporters, in front of cameras. The man responsible, a Korean member ofYamaguchi-gumi, was arrested and eventually convicted of the murder. His motive remains unknown. On the evening of 5 May, a burning paper bag was discovered in a toilet in Tokyo's busyShinjuku station. Upon examination, it was revealed that it was ahydrogen cyanide device which, had it not been extinguished in time, would have released enough gas into the ventilation system to potentially kill 10,000 commuters.[37] On 4 July, several undetonated cyanide devices were found at other locations in the Tokyo subway.[49][50][51]
During this time, numerous cult members were arrested for various offenses, but arrests of the most senior members on the charge of the subway gassing had not yet taken place. In June, an individual unrelated to Aum had launched a copycat attack by hijackingAll Nippon Airways Flight 857, a Boeing 747 bound for Hakodate from Tokyo. The hijacker claimed to be an Aum member in possession of sarin and plastic explosives, but these claims were ultimately found to be false.[52]
Asahara was finally found hiding within a wall of a cult building known as "The 6th Satian" in the Kamikuishiki complex on 16 May and was arrested.[37] On the same day, the cult mailed a parcel bomb to the office ofYukio Aoshima, the governor of Tokyo, blowing off the fingers of his secretary's hand. Asahara was initially charged with 23 counts of murder and 16 other offenses. The trial, dubbed "the trial of the century" by the press, ruled Asahara guilty of masterminding the attack andsentenced him to death. The indictment was appealed unsuccessfully. Several senior members accused of participation, such as Masami Tsuchiya, also received death sentences.[citation needed]
The reasons why a small circle of mostly senior Aum members committed atrocities and the extent of personal involvement by Asahara remain unclear, although several theories have attempted to explain these events. In response to the prosecution's charge that Asahara ordered the subway attacks to distract authorities, the defense maintained that Asahara was not aware of events, pointing to his deteriorating health. Shortly after his arrest, Asahara abandoned his post as the organization's leader, and maintained silence afterward, refusing to communicate even with lawyers and family members.[citation needed]
On 21 June 1995, Asahara acknowledged that in January 1994, he ordered the killing of a sect member, Kotaro Ochida, a pharmacist at an Aum hospital. Ochida, who tried to escape from a sect compound, was held down and strangled by another Aum member who was allegedly told that he too would be killed if he did not strangle Ochida. On 10 October 1995, Aum Shinrikyo was ordered stripped of its official status as a "religiouslegal entity" and was declared bankrupt in early 1996. However, the group continues to operate under the constitutional guarantee offreedom of religion, funded by a successful computer business and donations, and under strictsurveillance. Attempts to ban the group altogether under the 1952 Subversive Activities Prevention Law were rejected by the Public Security Examination Commission in January 1997.[citation needed]
The group underwent several transformations in the aftermath of Asahara's arrest and trial. For a brief time, Asahara's two preteen sons officially replaced him as guru. It re-grouped under the new name "Aleph" in February 2000. It announced a change in doctrine: religious texts related to controversialVajrayana Buddhist doctrines and the Bible were removed. The group apologized to the victims of the sarin gas attack and established a special compensation fund. Provocative publications and activities that alarmed society are no longer published.[citation needed]
Fumihiro Joyu, one of the few senior leaders of the group under Asahara who did not face serious charges, became the official head of the organization in 1999.Kōki Ishii, a legislator who formed an anti-Aum committee in theNational Diet in 1999, was murdered in 2002.
For over 15 years, only three fugitives were being actively sought. At 11:50 p.m. on 31 December 2011, Makoto Hirata surrendered himself to the police and was arrested on suspicion of being involved in the 1995 abduction of Kiyoshi Kariya, a non-member who had died during an Aum kidnapping and interrogation.[53][54][55] On 3 June 2012, police captured Naoko Kikuchi, the second fugitive, acting on a tip from local residents.[56]
Acting on information from the capture of Kikuchi, including recent photographs showing a modified appearance, the last remaining fugitive, Katsuya Takahashi, was captured on 15 June 2012. He is said to have been the driver in the Tokyo gas attack and was caught in Tokyo, having been on the run for 17 years.[57]
On 6 July 2018, Asahara and six other Aum Shinrikyo members were executed byhanging.[58][4] Japan's Justice MinisterYōko Kamikawa stated that the crimes "plunged people, not only in Japan but in other countries as well, into deadly fear and shook society to its core."Amnesty International criticized the use of the death penalty in the case. While executions are rare in Japan, they have public support according to surveys.[59] There were 13 members on death row at the time:
Aum Shinrikyo members executed on 6 July 2018:[58]
The six remaining Aum Shinrikyo members were executed on 26 July 2018.[60][61]
Initially, it was expected that Shoko Asahara's ashes would be collected by his youngest daughter according to his will. She urged her relatives and cult members to "put an end to the Aum and stop hating society". The ashes were kept at the detention center for fear of reprisals from other elements of the cult.[62] In 2020 the Tokyo Family Court ruled that the second daughter, who had the "closest" relationship with her father, and who had repeatedly visited her father while he was incarcerated, should receive his hair and remains. On July 2, 2021, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by the fourth daughter and upheld the ruling of the family court.[63] In 2024 theTokyo District Court ordered the government to hand over the remains to the second daughter.[64]
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Aum Shinrikyo is asyncretic belief system that draws upon Asahara's idiosyncratic interpretations of elements of earlyIndian Buddhism andTibetan Buddhism, as well asHinduism, takingShiva as the main image of worship; it also incorporatesChristianmillennialist ideas, the theory and practice ofyoga, and the writings ofNostradamus.[65][66] Its founder,Shoko Asahara (born Chizuo Matsumoto), claimed that he sought to restore "original Buddhism" but employed Christian millennialist rhetoric.[67]In 1992, Asahara published a foundational book, declaring himself to be "Christ",[68] Japan's only fully enlightened master, as well as identifying himself as the "Lamb of God".[69]
Asahara's purported mission was to take upon himself thesins of the world, and he claimed he could transfer spiritual power to his followers and ultimately take away their sins and bad deeds.[70] While some scholars reject Aum Shinrikyo's claims of Buddhist characteristics and affiliations withJapanese Buddhism,[71] other scholars refer to it as an offshoot of Japanese Buddhism,[72] and this was how the movement generally defined and saw itself.[73]
Their teachings claimed anuclear apocalypse was predicted to occur soon, as the result of a conspiracy involving Jewish financiers, Freemasons, and war profiteers. The United States would lead a Western nuclear attack on Japan in 2000 or 2006, andWWIII would start. It would be fought withparticle beam weapons.[74] According toRobert Jay Lifton, an American psychiatrist and author:
[Asahara] described a final conflict culminating in anuclear 'Armageddon', borrowing the term from the Book of Revelation16:16"[19]
Humanity would end, except for the elite few who joined Aum.[20] Aum's mission was not only to spread the word ofsalvation, but also to survive theseEnd Times. Asahara predicted the gathering at Armageddon would happen in 1997.[20] Kaplan notes that in his lectures, Shoko Asahara referred to the United States as "The Beast" from the Book of Revelation, predicting it would eventually attack Japan.[20] Asahara outlined a doomsday prophecy, which included aThird World War instigated by the U.S.[75]
In the opinion of Daniel A. Metraux, Aum Shinrikyo justified its violence through its own unique interpretation of Buddhist ideas and doctrines, such as the Buddhist concepts ofMappō andShōbō. Aum claimed that by bringing about the end of the world, they would restoreShōbō.[76] Furthermore, Lifton believes, Asahara "interpreted the Tibetan Buddhist concept ofphowa in order to claim that by killing someone contrary to the group's aims, they were preventing them from accumulating bad karma and thus saving them".[19][page needed] In Aum's terminology, phowa is spelled "poa" (ポア).
The name "Aum Shinrikyo" (オウム真理教,Ōmu Shinrikyō), usually rendered in English as "Aum Supreme Truth", derives from theSanskrit syllableAum, used to representthe universe, followed by theJapaneseShinrikyo (meaning, roughly, "Teaching of Truth") written inkanji. (In Japanese, kanji are often used to write bothSino-xenic and native Japanese words, but only rarely to transcribe direct borrowings from other languages.)
In January 2000, the organization changed its name to "Aleph", a reference to thefirst letter of theHebrew alphabet,[77][78][79] and it also replaced its logo.[80]
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According to a June 2005 report by theNational Police Agency, Aleph had approximately 1,650 members, of whom 650lived communally in compounds.[1] The group operated 26 facilities in 17prefectures, and about 120 residential facilities. An article in theMainichi Shimbun newspaper on 11 September 2002 showed that the Japanese public still distrusts Aleph, and compounds are usually surrounded by protest banners from local residents.[citation needed]
In January 2000, the group was placed under surveillance for a period of three years under an anti-Aum law, in which the group was required to submit a list of members and details of assets to the authorities.[81] In the same year, a Russian member was arrested for plotting a bombing attack as part of a plan to rescue Asahara from police custody.[82] The plan was led by Dmitry Sigachev, who was arrested atPrimorsky Krai.[83]
In 2001, Russian Aum members had reportedly planned to attack theTokyo Imperial Palace with explosives in an effort to free Asahara from police custody.[84]
In January 2003, thePublic Security Intelligence Agency received permission to extend the surveillance for another three years, as they found evidence which suggested that the group still revered Asahara.[85] According to the Religious News Blog report issued in April 2004, the authorities still considered the group "a threat to society".[86]
On 15 September 2006, Shoko Asahara lost his final appeal against thedeath penalty. The following day Japanese police raided the offices of Aleph in order to "prevent any illegal activities by cult members in response to the confirmation of Asahara's death sentence".[87] Thirteen cult members were eventually sentenced to death.[88]
On 8 March 2007,Fumihiro Joyu, former Aum Shinrikyo spokesman and head of Aum'sMoscow operation, formally announced a long-expected split.[89] Joyu's group, calledHikari no Wa ("The Circle of Light"), claims to be committed to uniting science and religion and creating "the new science of the human mind", having previously aimed to move the group away from its criminal history and toward its spiritual roots.[90]
In April 2011, the Public Security Intelligence Agency stated that Aum had about 1,500 members.[91] In July 2011, the cult reported its membership as 1,030. The group was reportedly active in trying to recruit new members via social media and proselytizing on college campuses.[92][93]
Japan's Public Security Examination Commission announced in January 2015 that Aum Shinrikyo's two spinoffs would remain under surveillance for three more years starting 1 February 2015.[12]
In 2014,The Japan Times alleged that "good looks and commitment to a cause", demonstrated by Aleph, "inspire a new generation of admirers". Dissatisfaction with society and low degrees of success in life make them "identify with the cult" and "adore the cultists as if they were pop idols".[94]
Sometime after April 2013, thePublic Security Intelligence Agency took a photograph inside of Aleph's facilities.[95] In this photograph, a bundle of papers is pierced with a knife on analtar-like object.[95] The papers included photographs of PSIA employees and directors, police officers, and lawyer Taro Takimoto, who helped followers leave Aum Shinrikyo.[95] At least at this point in time, Aleph still displayed portraits of Shoko Asahara and demanded followers' dependence using videos of Asahara.[96]
In March 2016, Montenegro expelled 58 foreigners suspected of being associated with Aum Shinrikyo.[97] Four of them were from Japan; 43 were from Russia, seven from Belarus, three from Ukraine, and one from Uzbekistan.[97]
On 5 April 2016, theInvestigative Committee of Russia announced it opened a criminal case against Aum Shinrikyo followers and that its investigators, along withFederal Security Service (FSB) forces, were conducting raids inMoscow andSaint Petersburg to find them and confiscate literature, religious items and electronic information.[98] On 20 September 2016, the Russian government banned Aum Shinrikyo from the country, declaring it a terrorist organization.[83]
In November 2017, Japanese police raided five offices of Aleph in an investigation into the group's recruiting practices after a woman paid tens of thousands of yen for study sessions.[99]
On 1 January 2019, inTokyo, Aum sympathizer Kazuhiro Kusakabe told authorities heintentionally rammed into pedestrians crowded into narrowTakeshita Street inHarajuku district as a terrorist attack in "retaliation for an execution". It remains unclear whether he was referencing the 2018 executions of Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult members directly or making a broader statement. The attack, onNew Year's Day, left eight injured. A ninth person was also directly injured by the driver.[100]
(... enough Sarin in Aum's possession to kill over 4 million people).
the name change from Aum Shinrikyo to Aleph, which is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet
Aum also said it would change its name to "Aleph" – taken from the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet – and rid itself of part of its doctrine which has been interpreted as condoning murder if it benefits the cult.
In January, it claimed it had about 1,200 followers and stated it was changing its name to Aleph, the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet.
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