TOKYO (AFP) – A former member of Japan’s Aum Supreme Truth doomsday cult, which was responsible for the 1995 nerve-gas attack on the Tokyo subway, was arrested Sunday after almost 17 years on the run, police said.
Makoto Hirata, 46, turned himself into a police station in central Tokyo just 10 minutes before midnight on New Year’s Eve, according to media reports.
He was held on suspicion of taking part in a plot to kidnap and confine a brother of an Aum follower who had escaped from the cult in February 1995, a month before the attack, a Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department spokesman said.
The victim, who was 68, died from tracheal obstruction a day later when he was given an injection at Aum’s main commune at the foot of Mount Fuji, the official said.
Full story: Aum cult fugitive surrenders after 17 years on the run