SHIMPACHI YOSHIDA
Asahi
February 3, 2025
A bureau chief who oversaw police investigations into Aum Shinrikyo said he feels responsible for the “indecision” on a crackdown that allowed the cult to commit its deadly gas attack in Tokyo in 1995.
According to Takashi Kakimi, who was at the time director-general of the Criminal Affairs Bureau of the National Police Agency, police were planning to search Aum Shinrikyo facilities in Tokyo and the village of Kamikuisshiki in Yamanashi Prefecture as early as March 22, 1995.
But on the morning of March 20 that year, Aum Shinrikyo members released sarin nerve gas on five trains on the Hibiya, Marunouchi and Chiyoda subway lines.
Fourteen people died and more than 6,000 were injured.
“Looking back, we could have chosen to carry out a search before completing investigations because there were suspicions that sarin existed (at Aum facilities),” Kakimi, 82, said in an interview with scholars, a journalist and an Asahi Shimbun reporter.
“Given the number of casualties, I still wonder if we could not have decided sooner on the search. I feel responsible for our indecision,” he said.
It is the first time that Kakimi discussed details of the overall investigations. He had remained almost silent on the issue after retiring from the NPA in August 1996.
Kakimi agreed to a series of interviews from May last year in response to a proposal from a legal scholar, his friend. Kakimi explained that he thought he is responsible for recording the police decisions for posterity.
Aum Shinrikyo clearly emerged on the radar of the Criminal Affairs Bureau after eight people were killed and more than 600 were injured in a sarin gas attack in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, on June 27, 1994.
The NPA’s National Research Institute of Police Science reported on Nov. 16, 1994, that a breakdown product of sarin was discovered from soil around a cult facility in Kamikuisshiki.
Nine days later, the Criminal Affairs Bureau laid out a basic plan to search Aum Shinrikyo facilities.
Under the plan, police would initiate a search within two to three months over the confinement of a former nurse in Yamanashi Prefecture and later open a wider search over the confinement of an inn operator in Miyazaki Prefecture.
A total of 600 investigators would be deployed.
A meeting to discuss whether to implement the basic plan was held on Dec. 15, attended by Kakimi, NPA Commissioner-General Takaji Kunimatsu, as well as the director-general of the NPA’s Security Bureau and the chief of the First Investigation Division.
After one hour of discussions, the participants concluded that a search was premature because details had yet to be fully understood.
On Feb. 24, 1995, the Criminal Affairs Bureau decided to carry out the basic plan in early March with about 3,000 investigators.
Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department later joined the investigations after an employee of a notary office in the capital was abducted by Aum Shinrikyo members on Feb. 28.
At a meeting on March 17, the NPA and the MPD effectively decided to carry out the search on March 22.
While the MPD sought an early search of facilities in Tokyo, the NPA called for a simultaneous search including facilities in Kamikuisshiki, according to Kakimi.
Senior NPA and MPD investigators met again on March 19, but they failed to determine the date due to disagreements over search arrangements.
Kakimi said he planned to finalize the date and arrangements on March 20 after reporting the issue to Kunimatsu.
During rush hour on that morning, Aum Shinrikyo members, using sharpened umbrella points, punctured plastic bags filled with sarin on the Tokyo subway system.
Two days later, police searched cult facilities in Tokyo and Yamanashi Prefecture, among others.
Kakimi said the NPA failed to carry out a search before March 20 because sufficient evidence was not available to arrest suspects in the confinement cases in Yamanashi and Miyazaki prefectures.
The MPD, which could mobilize personnel and equipment required for a large-scale search, also did not join the investigations until a later stage.
“We allowed (Aum Shinrikyo) to go on the offensive,” Kakimi said. “I felt that we should have initiated a search early.”
https://www.asahi.com/sp/ajw/articles/15610830
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