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Asahi Shimbun / AFP/Getty Images
FILE PHOTO: On March 20, 1995, subway passengers waited to receive medical attention after inhaling nerve gas.
Updated at 7:11 a.m. ET: TOKYO - After 17 years on the run, the last remaining member of the Japanese doomsday cult wanted for the deadly 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system was arrested by police Friday.
Katsuya Takahashi, a former member of the Aum Shirikyo cult who is believed to have been responsible for transporting cult members to the site of the subway attack, which left 13 dead and 54 wounded.
He was arrested at a 24 hour comic book cafe after a tip-off to Tokyo police from a cafe employee.
The search for Takahashi had been dormant for close to two decades, but took a dramatic turn earlier this month when another former cult member Naoko Kikuchi who had been wanted for her involvement in the sarin production, was apprehended by the police.
Suspect in 1995 Tokyo gas attack arrested in Japan
After questioning Kikuchi, investigators were able to piece together the last 17 years of Takahashi's life, leading them to the construction company where Takahashi had been working up until Kikuchi's arrest.
From there, surveillance videos surfaced capturing images of Takahashi at a nearby bank and a shopping center.
Takahashi has told police that he was only following orders from the cult, and wasn't aware of some of the operations' objectives.
AP / Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department via Kyodo News
Video footage of a surveillance camera released by Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department shows Katsuya Takahashi, a former member of Aum Shinrikyo cult, at a bank near Tokyo.
Although the principle ringleaders of the cult have long been convicted and sentenced, authorities are hoping that this arrest of the last Aum Shirikyo suspect will shed new facts and details on the cults' most heinous crimes.
The cult was founded in 1984 by leader Shoko Asahara on a doomsday principle that World War III would be instigated by the United States. Asahara predicted the world would come to an end in 1997.
Msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.
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Leave a Comment:
I'm glad to learn of this. My neighborhood was heavily affected, and just last night I ran into an acquaintance whose husband is still suffering breathing problems from the attack.
phucken republican
did you even read the article?
republican in Japan? lol
jerseydeville is, very likely, a Republican troll to stir up his fellow Republicans.
17 years on the run, in a nation of approximately 100 million people. That beats Whitey Bulger's run, which just ended last year.
I can't believe this clown managed to evade capture without a dedicated group of sympathizers, who provided safe havens, money and other means of support.
The Japanese authorities should strive to root out all of those who helped him.
Three have come into custody since New Year. They were supporting one another, but then one turned himself in and the dominoes began to fall. Sure, there may be more in the shadows who have been supporting them, but it looks like this final guy ran out of much of that support when the other 2 fell. The news here has been plastering his face all over the place after a recent updated photo came into their possession. It's been good to see them rounded up one by one.
Or he feels guilty and knew he deserved to go to jail. Perhaps the others arrests were that final push towards his thought of turning himself in, we can't just assume he was just running out of help.
not all people who help others are evil...
Those who aid perpetrators of evil, are behaving in an evil manner.
"Birds of a feather, flock together."
dman-353357: Tokyo is a large city that, in many respects, eases the process of becoming and remaining anonymous. Add to that that most people had seen only one photograph of Takahashi and that that photograph was blurry and progressively older and older, it really did not take so much as one would think for him to remain at large.
Good thing Hitler didn't use his Sarin nerve gas or we would all be doing the goosestep.
Zyklon B was effective enough... and we aren't doing the goosestep!
Zyklon B is cyanide, it doesn't come close to sarin in toxicity or delivery.
While the Nazis did not use gas in Warfare they did put gas on the ground around some areas they wanted to be secure. This gas was put down pretty much like land mining an area. Unlike land mines that can be recovered the gas can't. It is still extremely deadly even after being weathered all these years. If they have tried to decontaminate these areas I don't really know. I stayed in Germany for better than 5 years til I retired.
6dogs do you have any proof of this? I mean really, the Nazis used Sarin gas to "secure ground" but not to win at Stalingrad or Kursk? What's the point in that?
WW3 is gonna kick ass. get ready Brazil
yeah MW3 is a great game
Another one of those nuts preacher, cult leaders who's time of the world end just goes to show again that nobody knows and if it did come, who would know or care. We would all be dead.
How killing people who have done no harm to cult will make the predication's or the end of the world any more believable is just plain crazy. How do these nuts come up with this garbage.
You answered your own question when you said "nuts".
There is no end to the violent insanity of religion.
In most religions, reason is a sin and insanity is a virtue.
I hope there is some sarin leftover for this cult leader -
Hang him high until his skinny neck snaps.
I don't get how killing innocent people helps anyones cause. If it was going to be the end of the world, isn't that enough? I think it already happened, lol. Jesus came and took all of the good christians away and what we're left with is hell on earth.
We all could be enjoying this beautiful paradise we live on but instead we are slaves to money and scramble over the scraps that are dropped from the 1% table like dogs. We are slowly destroying this place one generation at a time. I sincerely hope that when and if the end comes that whoever is left to pick up the pieces will say to themselves, "yep, not going to do things like that again". This plan sucks, lol. We are capable of so much more.
dissapointed?
well if he wasnt involved then he should have turned himself in.. right? You dont run for 17 years unless your hiding something....
Dame808: It's dangerous to assume that "[y]ou dont run for 17 years unless your hiding something...." Enough people have in various places had to run for years because of, for example, government persecution: Anne Frank and her family, for example, tried it. The hundreds upon hundreds of Christians (about 40,000, probably) slaughtered by the Tokugawa Shogunate right here in Japan likewise provided examples that led to Christianity's becoming a kind of underground cult also.
Part of the doctrine of Aum (オウム真理教) was that the group was being persecuted by Japanese authorities. If Takahashi indeed sincerely believed that such persecution existed, he would not have been doing anything wrong in his own mind.
I am glad that they caught this criminal.
the idiots need to be nerve gased off the planet period
eye for an eye
Cults kill people because the end of the world is coming? HAHAHA, and they run and hide for 17 years to live as long as they can. They need to be hung with a scratchy rope, slowly. With over 7 billion people on the planet, do we need freaks like that?
"The cult was founded in 1984 by leader Shoko Asahara on a doomsday principle that World War III would be instigated by the United States."
I'm not a member of that cult, but the possibility that WWIII might be instigated by the U.S. is really not all that far fetched. I think it's at least more believable than Jesus returning to end the world. Anyway, I'm glad they caught this guy.
Not trying to be mean or anything but it's just as good a possibility as Iran instigating WW3. America is not the only "hostile" country out there. Actually, Syria could very well be the culprit with all the bull that's going down there right now. I'm not saying that it isn't possible, I'm just saying there are other possibilities. I really think people in general should worry more about living their lives and being with their loved ones instead of worrying about the end of the world.
Heather Gilmore,
"I really think people in general should worry more about living their lives and being with their loved ones instead of worrying about the end of the world."
Good point. Of course there are many possibilities as to who might start WWIII. I only meant to say that the idea that it could be the U.S. is not too far fetched an idea.
I had forgotten all about this whole case till just now. I hope as we approach December 2012, there are no violent acts like this one. The last doomsday scare of 2000 made everyone crazy.
He should be given a fair trial.......THEN HUNG! Terrorism, no matter the cause, is a cancer on civilized society and should never be tolerated and when terrorists are caught they should be dealt with in the harshest manner - immediate death sentence and even faster action to carry out the sentence!
wtfjes66: None of this fair trial crap, right?
Now, I don't throw around fire and brimstone stuff, at all, but, seriously, Why are such "people" (if convicted with irrefutable evidence) even Allowed to Live? This evil bastard, and the rest of these sickos, are still alive, and he's been outside of prison, not caught until seventeen years after killing anonymously. Anonymous killing, preying on people completely unknown to you, who have never done anything against you, is just so, so, well, Evil.
It seems normal for religious fanatics.
That was G.W.Bush and his buddies that made the U.S. crazy
Well, the world did end for those who died that day and the U.S. had nothing to do with it. Idiots all.
Would be nice to off all of those ba$turds. But we've all become too civilized. They killed innocent people and don't deserve to live and breathe unless of course, it's a deadly toxin.
My wife told me if a gas her one more time when we are in bed she will kill me.
@asa4,
Are you like 8 years old?
No, but my great-grand-son is 5 and sometimes he likes to get in bed with us in the morning on the other side of my wife. We have gassed her out of bed on more than one occasion.
time too serve the man now. he is luckey japan does not have the death penalty any longer
SEMPER FI
DANNY
RETIRED
marine 55: Japan does still use the death penalty. The leader of the cult Takahashi was involved in is currently under sentence of death.