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Yahoo! My Yahoo! Mail More Yahoo! Services Account Options New User? Sign Up Sign In Help Yahoo! Search web search Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Asia Pacific World 15 years on, Japan film recalls doomsday cult sarin attacks AFP - Friday, March 19 Send IM Story Print Wearing anti-chemical and biological suits, Japanese firemen participate in an anti-terror drill at a Tokyo subway station on March 16. On March 20, 1995, the Aum Supreme Truth doomsday cult unleashed Nazi-invented sarin gas on Tokyo's morning rush-hour trains on the orders of their leader, a half-blind former acupuncturist who preached of a coming apocalypse. TOKYO (AFP) - – Time may have diminished the trauma of the worst terrorist attack in modern Japanese history, which struck 15 years ago Saturday, but widow Shizue Takahashi is determined not to let the memory fade. On March 20, 1995, the Aum Supreme Truth doomsday cult unleashed Nazi-invented sarin gas on Tokyo's morning rush-hour trains on the orders of their leader, a half-blind former acupuncturist who preached of a coming apocalypse. More than 6,200 people were injured in the coordinated attacks on the world's busiest commuter subway system, and 13 people died. One of those killed was Takahashi's husband Kazumasa, a railway worker aged 50 who removed a plastic bag containing the smouldering nerve gas from a crowded carriage at the inner-city Tokyo Metro station of Kasumigaseki. He was declared dead at a nearby hospital before his wife arrived. To honour his memory and ensure the other victims are not forgotten, Takahashi has made a film based on interviews with survivors, police, doctors, journalists and officials who witnessed the disaster. "I thought we have to pass the lessons on to young people," Takahashi, 63, said at the Tokyo premiere of her film last week. The documentary recalls the day of horror when Tokyo train stations resembled battlefields, with panicked commuters rushing for the exits and victims on the ground bleeding from their mouths and noses. The attack was carried out by followers of Shoko Asahara, real name Chizuo Matsumoto, who dropped bags of sarin, more deadly than cyanide, on five subway lines converging on Kasumigaseki, the capital's government district. Asahara, a former yoga teacher, preached a blend of Buddhist and Hindu philosophy mixed with apocalyptic visions in a secretive cult that at its height had 11,400 followers in Japan and more disciples overseas. Many of them were graduates of top universities, including chemists, doctors, IT engineers and lawyers, as well as practitioners of martial arts. Long before the subway attacks, the cult had committed murders and kidnappings and manufactured guns, drugs and bombs as well as biological and chemical weapons, reportedly even seeking to weaponise the Ebola virus. Only later did police realise the cult had unleashed sarin the previous year in the city of Matsumoto, Nagano prefecture, killing seven people. When police raided the cult's compounds, they found a Russian military helicopter. In Takahashi's film, former national police chief Takaji Kunimatsu recalls how police planning March 22, 1995 raids on the cult's facilities had received vague tips that Aum might try do something to divert police attention. "I cannot find words to apologise enough to the victims of the subway sarin attack," Kumimatsu says in the film. If the police missed some vital clues in the lead-up to the Tokyo attacks, the government afterwards was accused of dragging its feet in helping the victims, who organised campaigns to demand medical and financial help. Before the attacks "there was a public sentiment that crime victims are strangers who live somewhere else," said former top public prosecutor Keiichi Tadaki. "It really taught people that 'I can become a victim tomorrow'." Fifteen years on, Asahara and 12 other cult figures are on death row over the subway attacks and other crimes, and 10 of them have exhausted their appeals. None has been executed. Several members are still on the run. The cult was never outlawed in Japan, thanks to the country's constitutional guarantee of the freedom of religion, although it was banned from teaching Asahara's violent dogma and remains under close surveillance. The group now calls itself "Aleph", with about 1,500 members in Japan, a third of whom live in compounds, and about 200 followers in Russia. A breakaway faction is called "Hikari no wa" or "The Circle of Rainbow Light". Police say the cult attracted more than 100 new Japanese members last year, mostly young people recruited in the spiritual sections of book shops or through Internet social networking sites. Investigators regularly raid the cult, where they have found followers listening to mantras and watching video recorded by the jailed guru, whose portrait still decorates the walls of their training facilities. 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