Cult member out of hiding

A MEMBER of the doomsday cult behind a deadly Tokyo subway gas attack in addition to other crimes turned himself in to police yesterday after 17 years on the run.

A Tokyo metropolitan police official said Makoto Hirata, a member of Aum Shinrikyo, conspired with several other members in kidnapping a notary official in 1995 and causing his death. The victim, Kiyoshi Kariya, then 68, was the brother of a follower trying to quit the group.

Hirata, 46, who had been on the run since the summer of 1995, turned himself in at a Tokyo police station and was detained early on Sunday, the police official said on condition of anonymity.

The cult also released sarin nerve gas in Tokyo’s subway system in 1995, killing 13 people and injuring more than 6,000 in Japan’s deadliest ever act of domestic terrorism.

The cult had amassed an arsenal of chemical, biological and conventional weapons in anticipation of an apocalyptic showdown with the government.

Police say Hirata and other cult members kidnapped Kariya off a Tokyo street and confined him at the group’s tightly guarded commune at the foot of Mount Fuji. Kariya died from a drug overdose, police said.

According to court testimony, cult members burned Kariya’s body in an incinerator inside the commune and disposed of the ashes in a nearby lake to destroy the evidence.

Public broadcaster NHK said Hirata told police he wanted to “put the past behind him.” He was carrying a travel pack containing minimal daily necessities and had Japanese currency worth several hundred dollars in his wallet, it said.

Hirata was one of the last three wanted cult members.

The cult, now renamed Aleph, once had 10,000 members in Japan and another 30,000 in Russia.