Tokyo (Kyodo) -- The Justice Ministry's Public Security Intelligence Agency on Friday inspected locations linked with a splinter group of the AUM Shinrikyo cult, Hikari no Wa (Circle of Rainbow Light).
Some 70 officials from the agency inspected the group's biggest facility in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward and locations in Miyagi, Chiba, Kanagawa, Nagano, Aichi, Osaka and Fukuoka prefectures.
This was the first raid on the group's facilities since a panel under the ministry renewed its decision to keep AUM's two successors -- Aleph and Hikari no Wa -- under surveillance by the agency for another three years from this month.
AUM Shinrikyo, known for its sarin nerve gas attacks in the Tokyo subway in 1995 and in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture in 1994, renamed itself Aleph in 2000. Fumihiro Joyu, who once served as AUM's spokesman, launched the splinter group Hikari no Wa in 2007
