TOKYO, January 21 (RAPSI, Ksenia Naka) – Tomomasa Nakagawa, a senior member of the notorious Aum Shinrikyo cult who has been sentenced to death for his crimes, has testified against his fellow member, 48-year-old Makoto Hirata, in a jury trial in the Tokyo District Court.

Hirata has been charged with abducting 68-year-old public notary Kiyoshi Kariya in February 1995 and with organizing an explosion in a residential building in Tokyo. 
Nakagawa, age 50, a doctor by education, injected Kariya with a large dose of an opiate, following which the man died.

Hirata walked into a police station two years ago after being on the run for 17 years. He claims that he did not take an active part in Kariya’s abduction but only assisted in it.

Nakagawa was one of the organizers of the sarin gas attack in the Tokyo metro in March 1995, in which 13 people died and 6,300 were poisoned. He was also directly involved in making the gas for the terrorist attack.

He gave his testimony in conditions of strict security. His seat in the court was surrounded by bullet-proof glass and screened from spectators so that only the direct participants in the trial could see him.

Before giving his testimony, Nakagawa asked for forgiveness from the victims’ relatives for the Aum’s attack.

The other two death-row criminals expected to testify in the Hirata case in February are Yoshihiro Inoue, 43, and Yasuo Koike, 55.

Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth) was set up in 1987 by Chizuo Matsumoto (aka Shoko Asahara). It combined Buddhist and Hindu meditation practices and apocalyptic teachings and was believed to have between 30,000 and 50,000 followers, with more than 10,000 members in Russia, where Aum was engaged in missionary activity and economic enterprise. The sect was banned worldwide in 1995, with Russia leading the crackdown.

Now operating under the name of Aleph, the cult is still in business and is believed to have between 1,000 and 2,000 members in Japan.
Thirteen high-ranking Aum members, including its founder, Shoko Asahara, currently await execution on death row for their crimes.