Police says AUM conducted unsolved 1995 police chief shooting case

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TOKYO, March 30 Kyodo -
Police released a report Tuesday attributing the 1995 shooting of the then
national police chief to the AUM Shinrikyo cult, making an extraordinary
announcement of ''findings'' in an unsolved case, after the statute of
limitations for prosecution expired at midnight Monday.
''We have recognized that it was an organized, premeditated terror attack
conducted by AUM Shinrikyo members under the will of (now) death-row inmate
Chizuo Matsumoto,'' said the report on the shooting of then National Police
Agency chief Takaji Kunimatsu.
Matsumoto, the cult's founder more commonly known as Shoko Asahara, has been on
death row for masterminding a series of crimes including the 1995 sarin gas
attack on the Tokyo subway system that left 13 dead and some 6,300 injured.
Goro Aoki, head of the public security department of Tokyo's Metropolitan
Police Department, told a press conference Tuesday they were unable to build a
criminal case on the shooting as they did not obtain sufficient evidence to
identify culprits, but added that only AUM could be considered responsible.
The police sent papers Tuesday to prosecutors without specifying the suspects
in the shooting of Kunimatsu, who was seriously injured in the attack in front
of his home in Tokyo on March 30, 1995.
The police plan to post the results of the investigation on their website for
30 days from Wednesday.
The rare announcement was met with surprise and criticism from experts and
those involved in the case.
''I was surprised by the rare announcement,'' Kunimatsu said, but added he
understood the police decision to do so in such a high-profile case.
''The investigations were a failure as they could not gather enough evidence to
pursue criminal charges and indict,'' he said.
Aoki repeatedly voiced regret over the case in the press conference, but said
''there was no prejudice or prejudgment'' of the case when asked if police had
investigated solely under the belief that the cult carried out the attack.
Explaining why the police released results of an investigation which did not
yield criminal charges, Aoki said, ''We thought we needed to explain to the
people and that it would serve the public interest,'' but did not elaborate.
''How can they conclude that the case was conducted by AUM Shinrikyo? They
should not call it an attack by the cult when they have not specified the
culprits,'' said Tetsuya Fujimoto, criminology professor at Chuo University.
''The report tries to justify the initial investigative mistake of focusing on
the cult.''
AUM Shinrikyo has renamed itself Aleph, and a breakaway faction has founded the
Circle of Rainbow Light since the attack, according to the Public Security
Intelligence Agency.
''We cannot cast aside the feeling that this is a kind of false accusation,''
Aleph said in a statement. ''We regret that (the police) have not moved on from
the mistakes they made in the initial investigations.''
The shooting occurred shortly after police raided AUM Shinrikyo headquarters on
March 22, two days after the subway attack.
A former police officer who was a cult member once admitted involvement in the
attack, leading investigators to believe it was organized by the cult to
obstruct the police investigation and exact revenge.
The officer and several others suspected of involvement were not indicted,
however.
==Kyodo
2010-03-30 22:41:40