Japanese Police Focus on Elite Scientists in Sect

TOKYO — After finding ingredients that could be used for chemical and biological warfare, police are focusing their investigation on a group of elite scientists in the religious cult that is suspected in last week’s deadly nerve gas attack on subways here.

Authorities have seized computer disks, labeled with the name of Aum Supreme Truth’s “Science and Technology Ministry,” and supplies of chemicals and solvents allegedly used to make nerve gas. Police searches this week at the sect compound have also turned up cultures for a deadly bacteria and seven cult members with abnormal conditions, sparking fears that the cult was conducting gruesome tests of chemical and biological weapons on its own members.

Highly educated chemists, biologists, doctors and computer programmers are helping the doomsday group prepare to survive the end of world, Supreme Truth pamphlets say.

Scientists from Japan’s top universities are featured in a sect promotional video wearing the group’s distinctive white, Indian-style clothing and talking about achieving enlightenment, aided by high-tech treatments. Many sect members sport electronic headgear, said to synchronize their brain waves with those of group leader Shoko Asahara.

“They’re like mad scientists in a horror movie,” a chemistry professor said after hearing of paralyzing toxic bacteria, Clostridium botulinum , found at Supreme Truth’s complex. “But this is real life.”

The cult’s scientific bent helps it keep one foot in everyday society while allegedly pushing the outer limits at secret laboratories. Supreme Truth owns a chain of computer stores and a Tokyo hospital, and it claims to manufacture semiconductors.

Many Supreme Truth followers have technical or scientific backgrounds, say religion experts who have tracked the group.

“In the past, the older religions were characterized by miracles and supernatural phenomena, or they heard God’s word through revelation,” psychologist Shigeru Matsumoto said. That mystical appeal has been replaced by pseudo-scientific phenomena, he said.

Koa Tasaka, assistant professor of chemistry at Tokyo’s International Christian University, blames Japan’s education system for making young people susceptible to the psychedelic appeal of cults.

“Science education, especially in graduate school in Japan, tends to be just research oriented,” he said. “It produces people who are interested in chemical reactions only. That is wrong. We should teach these people more common sense and ethical values--at present they lack that aspect. They don’t have the power to differentiate what’s illegal and what’s proper.”