Photo/Illutration An internal National Police Agency document says a company with ties to Aum Shinrikyo “emerged” on July 19, 1994, 22 days after a sarin gas attack in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture. (Kotaro Ebara)

Police connected a company with ties to the Aum Shinrikyo cult to the sarin nerve gas attack in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, 22 days after the deadly assault in June 1994, a document shows.

But police did not mount a full-fledged investigation into the doomsday cult until after Aum members committed a similar but deadlier nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system a year later.

The Asahi Shimbun obtained the internal National Police Agency document, titled “summary of investigation into the Matsumoto sarin case,” through an information disclosure request.

The document, produced in February 1996 by the First Investigation Division of the Criminal Affairs Bureau, lists developments in police investigations in chronological order on 10 sheets of A4-size paper. Many parts are blacked out.

Late on the night of June 27, 1994, sarin was released in a residential area of Matsumoto. The nerve gas killed eight people and injured about 600 others.

The Nagano prefectural police department opened its investigation the following night, and initially focused on Yoshiyuki Kono, a company employee who first reported the incident to police.

Kono was later cleared of any involvement. He and his wife,  Sumiko, were both sickened in the attack. She fell into a coma and died in 2008.

The prefectural police’s crime laboratory and other experts detected a substance believed to be sarin on July 3 that year, prompting investigators to look into sales channels of chemicals used to produce the nerve agent.

On July 19, 22 days after the attack, a company with ties to Aum Shinrikyo emerged as an entity of interest, according to the NPA document.

The document lists two other companies related to the cult in entries for Aug. 31 and Sept. 26.

Investigations into distribution routes of sarin ingredients apparently led police to those companies.

Prefectural police on Oct. 7 collected soil and other materials around an Aum Shinrikyo facility in Kamikuisshiki, Yamanashi Prefecture, where an unusual odor was reported, according to the NPA document.

An analysis of the soil samples discovered a breakdown product of sarin, according to a report the police received from the NPA’s National Research Institute of Police Science on Nov. 16.

The NPA on Dec. 21 called a joint meeting of the Kanagawa, Nagano, Yamanashi and Miyazaki prefectural police departments, which were all investigating Aum Shinrikyo-related incidents.

In 1995, meetings were held in early January, early February and March 17 to allow investigators to examine evidence they had gathered and to discuss dates to conduct searches.

On March 20, three days after the last police meeting, Aum Shinrikyo members released sarin on subway trains in central Tokyo during the morning rush hour, killing 13 and injuring thousands.

Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department searched Aum Shinrikyo facilities in the capital and Yamanashi and Shizuoka prefectures on March 22, two days after the Tokyo attack, in connection with the abduction of an employee of a Tokyo notary office.

Aum Shinrikyo founder Chizuo Matsumoto, also known as Shoko Asahara, and 11 others were arrested on July 16 that year over their roles in the sarin attack in Matsumoto.

The Matsumoto attack was initially targeted at the Matsumoto branch of the Nagano District Court, where a civil dispute involving the cult was pending. But the target was switched to a housing complex for local court judges because Aum members arrived late in the city.

Thirteen cultists, including Matsumoto, were executed in July 2018 over Aum Shinrikyo’s murderous crime spree.

Related News