COLUMNS

The Japanese Death Cult's String of Futility

Scott Stewart

VP of Tactical Analysis, Stratfor

Jul 10, 2018 | 10:00 GMT

A television screen in Tokyo announces the execution of Shoko Asahara, leader of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, which conducted a deadly attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995.

(TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/Getty Images)

Highlights

From the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, Aum Shinrikyo launched the most ambitious weapons-of-mass-destruction program ever by a non-state actor.
Despite devoting years of effort and tens of millions of dollars, the program met with only limited success.
Using more readily available weapons such as guns and explosives remains far cheaper and more effective in causing mass casualties.

On July 6, Japanese authorities executed Shoko Asahara, the founder of the apocalyptic Aum Shinrikyo cult, and six of his followers, closing the book on one of the most high-profile acts of terrorism in modern Japanese history. Aum Shinrikyo is best known for the March 1995 attack in which the group released the nerve agent sarin on five different trains in the Tokyo subway system, killing 12 people and sickening hundreds of others. But the group's most infamous action was far from its first attempt to inflict mass casualties on an unsuspecting public....

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