Tokyo - Japan's Public Security Intelligence Agency last year conducted on-site inspections of 32 facilities belonging to the AUM Shinrikyo cult under a law designed to curb the activities of the organization, whose members had committed indiscriminate mass murder, the government said Friday.
The cult responsible for the deadly 1995 sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system, which killed 13 people, and other lethal crimes, had a total of about 1,500 members as of Dec. 31, including its main grouping, which has been renamed Aleph, and a splinter group called Hikari no Wa (Circle of Rainbow Light), it said.
At the facilities, photos of AUM founder Shoko Asahara, 56, who is on death row, were still displayed and followers chanted "It is our pleasure to die for the guru" in celebration of his birthday, it said.
