Shoku Asahara must have thought himself invincible. After all, he had not only created his own fully-equipped army, but he had also produced his own chemical weapons and tested them successfully. It was, by the standards of any deranged criminal despot, a major achievement.
There was now, however, mounting pressure from several cult members’ families to launch an inquiry into the goings-on within Aum Shinrikyo. For an ordinary cult member to leave the compound was well-nigh impossible, but one elderly woman (who had donated her life savings to Aum Shinrikyo, only to become increasingly suspicious of the group’s agenda), did just this, escaping the compound and going into hiding. Asahara ordered her return and sent several squads to hunt her down, all of whom failed in their task. Instead, they kidnapped her sixty-eight-year-old brother, Kiyoshi Kariya, who for weeks after her disappearance had been plagued by phone calls demanding her return. Fearing for his life, Kiyoshi left a note saying that if anything happened to him then those responsible would be Aum Shinrikyo.
Kiyoshi was taken back to the cult’s headquarters where he was bound and beaten. He was given drugs in the hope that, under their influence, his tongue would loosen and he would reveal his sister’s location. Eventually, Kiyoshi fell into a coma and died. His body was quickly burned and his remains dumped outside the compound in a nearby lake. But Kiyhoshi was now about to avenge his own murder from beyond the grave. The note that he had left behind, identifying Aum Shinrikyo as his abductors, fell into the hands of the police. At last they had the evidence they needed to take action against the group and began to make preparations to mount a surprise raid on the cult’s headquarters. Asahara knew nothing about the planned police attack. Instead of bolstering his defences, he was concentrating on his own plans to unleash sarin gas on the Tokyo subway system during the early morning rush, hoping to cause the death of hundreds, if not thousands of citizens.
On March 20, 1995 at 8.00 a.m., a group of carefully hand-picked Aum Shinrikyo members (Kenichi Hirose, Yasuo Hayashi, Masato Yokoyama, Dr. Ikuo Hayashi and Toru Toyoda) stepped on to a variety of trains, all of which were timetabled to converge at Kasumigaseki station. Each member was carrying a small, toxic-resistant plastic bag filled to the brim with deadly sarin, along with specially adapted umbrellas with spiked ends. As each train neared its final destination, all five cult members placed their packages on the floor of their respective carriages and cut them open with their umbrella tips. Immediately sarin fumes began spreading through the trains. Those nearest the packages were coughing and wheezing within seconds of the gas being released. By the time the different trains pulled into Kasumigaseki, those passengers who were still able to were running for the exits, while the less fortunate lay dead and dying all over the platforms. Subway staff and police did all they could to help, but it was an impossible task. Twelve people died almost immediately and over 5,500 others were also affected by the attack, some of whom suffered horrific injuries. In the meantime, the perpetrators escaped and returned to the Aum Shinrikyo compound, where Asahara congratulated them and told them to go into hiding. The attack had been a huge success, but now it was time to lay low.
Asahara also went into hiding. His Rolls Royce was seen leaving the compound shortly after the subway attack. In the early hours of March 22, 1995, the police finally mounted a 1,000-man raid on the cult’s headquarters.
There were few, if any, surprises inside. Officers soon located bags of chemicals, all of which were taken away for forensic analysis, as well as countless pieces of equipment used for the chemicals’ manufacture. Hundreds of weapons were discovered as well as torture chambers and cells – several of which still contained prisoners. Yet, despite all the evidence that police confiscated from the compound, including the numerous chemicals, they didn’t make one single arrest in connection with the sarin-gas attack on the Tokyo subway. Asahara was in his element. He immediately released a video, stating that not only was Aum Shinrikyo not responsible for the carnage, but that the attack had been staged by the US military in an attempt to slur the cult. No one was convinced by his claims and within hours of the video’s release, Asahara, together with his most trusted lieutenants, was put on Japan’s ‘Most Wanted’ list. There now ensued further violence, this time directed straight at the authorities. Takaji Kunimatsu, the chief of the national police federation, was attacked by four gunmen and shot four times. Miraculously, he survived, but only hours after the hit, a message arrived at a Japanese television station stating that if the police didn’t back off from their investigation into the cult, then many more officers would die. The threat failed to impress anyone.
By April the police had begun arresting some of Aum Shinrikyo’s major players including Dr. Ikuo Hayashi and one of its hitmen, Tomomitsu Niimi. Both were charged with imprisoning people against their will. But the police’s main target, Shoku Asahara, was still at large, and still producing press releases. One of them threatened that, on April 15, 1995, a disaster would befall Japan on an even larger scale than the Kobe earthquake. The police, together with the army and the city’s hospitals, were all put on high alert, but when the fateful day arrived, nothing happened. It seemed as if Asahara was now making idle threats – but four days later a report came through that Yokohama station was the site of another gas attack. Approximately 550 people were rushed to hospital suffering from a combination of sore eyes and throats. Naturally, Aum Shinrikyo was the main suspect but a short while after the attack, a confession was made by a small-time gangster with a grudge against the police.
Still Shoku Asahara was a free man, although the police had made several significant arrests, as yet they hadn’t managed to charge anyone with the sarin-gas attack. Men such as Hideo Murai were still operating as if nothing had happened, but all this was about to change.
On April 23, Murai, together with the sect’s lawyer, Yoshinobu Aoyama, were on the point of entering their office building when a man rushed up and repeatedly stabbed Murai in the stomach. The assailant, Hiroyuki Jo, later confessed that he had committed the crime because of increasing anger at what Aum Shinrikyo had done on March 20. He later changed his story and said that he had been employed by the Yakuza – Japan’s mafia – to kill Murai in order to prevent him confessing to the police and implicating the Yakuza in Aum Shinrikyo’s attack. Hideo Murai died shortly after the stabbing, subsequent to which the police mounted further raids on more Aum Shinrikyo buildings, this time finding a basement that had hitherto lain undiscovered. In this room, cowering in a corner, officers were surprised to find two of the sect’s main players: Masami Tsuchiya and Seiichi Endo.
Despite their capture, on May 5, at Shinjuku station, staff discovered a burning package in one of the public toilets. Immediately they tried to put out the flames by pouring water over the parcel, but noxious fumes immediately began to rise from it. The police were called in and on later examination the package was found to contain condoms stuffed with sodium cyanide and sulphuric acid. When mixed, these chemicals combine to form hydrogen cyanide – the lethal gas used in the Nazi concentration camps to exterminate Jews. Once again, it seemed as if Shoku Asahara was baiting the police, showing them just how capable he was of wreaking havoc while still eluding arrest. Thankfully, however, his luck was about to run out.
Aum Shinrikyo followers sit on the ground to perform a ritual paying tribute to the sect’s chief scientist, Hideo Murai, who had been stabbed to death on that very spot twenty-four hours earlier.
On May 16, 1995, just over two months after the sarin subway attack, police stormed one of Aum Shinrikyo’s main buildings (a structure they had searched several times previously), where they eventually arrested Asahara. This was a major coup, but the attacks continued on the Tokyo subway where several cyanide bombs were planted, although none of them actually detonated.
The trials of the different Aum Shinrikyo detainees began in 1996. Asahara was charged with twenty-three counts of murder. Charges against the other Aum Shinrikyo members ranged from murder, attempted
murder, detaining people against their will, the manufacture of lethal drugs and a whole catalogue of less serious misdemeanors. A few of those in the dock gave full confessions in the hope that their sentences would be reduced. Other members, including Shoku Asahara, steadfastly pleaded not guilty. On October 8, 1998, the court sentenced Kazuaki Okazaki to death for the murder of the lawyer, Tsutsumi Sakamoto, his wife and child, as well as the murder of another cult member who had wanted to leave the sect in 1989.
Incredibly, it took a further eight years before Shoku Asahara was also handed a death sentence, after being found guilty of the murder of twenty-seven cult members. The sentence was handed down on February 27, 2004, with the presiding judge, Shoji Ogawa, stating that:
The crimes were cruel and inhuman, and his [Asahara’s] responsibility as the mastermind behind all the cases is extremely grave. He deserves the maximum punishment. He had dreams of being delivered from earth’s bonds and attempted to rule Japan as a king under the pretext of salvaging people. He had a selfish dogma of killing those who he thought were obstructing his bid, and armed his cult. He threw people in Japan and overseas into terror. It was an unprecedentedly brutal and serious crime.2
Asahara showed little emotion as the death sentence was passed, perhaps feeling safe in the knowledge that his legal team would launch an immediate appeal. Many have been reticent about expressing any opinion on the Aum Shinrikyo atrocities, even those directly affected by the organization’s activities. There is still grave concern about the kind of repercussions that members of the group could inflict. On hearing of Asahara’s sentence, Shizue Takahashi, the widow of a railway worker killed in the sarin subway attack, made the simple comment; ‘It was good to hear the death sentence that I had been hoping for.’3
On going to press, Asahara’s death sentence has still to be carried out.
ODESSA – A NAZI ESCAPE ROUTE
In Nuremberg at that time something was taking place that I personally considered a disgrace and an unfortunate lesson for the future of humanity. I became certain that the Argentine people also considered the Nuremberg process a disgrace, unworthy of the victors, who behaved as if they hadn’t been victorious. Now we realize that they [the Allies] deserved to lose the war. During my government I often delivered speeches against Nuremberg, which is an outrage history will not forgive.
From the private tapes of JUAN DOMINGO PERÓN, President of Argentina, 1946–55
At the end of World War II and for decades afterwards, historians and researchers debated the existence of a secret society formed primarily for the rescue of Nazi war criminals. Stories abounded of crates packed with Nazi gold either being smuggled out of Germany and deposited in numbered Swiss bank accounts, or arriving on the shores of Patagonia where they were driven off to secret locations. Other stories revolved around Hitler living out his last days in southern Argentina surrounded by loyal followers. Films were made (notably The Night Porter in 1973, starring Dirk Bogarde), documentaries shown, articles written together with many books (including Frederick Forsyth’s hugely popular novel, The Odessa File and Ira Levin’s The Boys from Brazil), all pointing to the fact that such an organization did indeed exist. The name Odessa (which stands for Organisation der ehemaligen SS-Angehörigen – Organization of Former Members of the SS) consequently passed into popular consciousness. But was such a society ever formed and if so by whom and with what aims?
The famous Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal stated that he only heard about Odessa during the Nuremberg trials, yet ever after was convinced of its reality, while other scholars have remained more sceptical. Few have done more to raise public awareness of the Odessa legend than the aforementioned novelist, Frederick Forsyth. His book, which was first published in 1972, tells the story of a group of former SS officers banding together to form an escape route out of Germany for high-ranking Nazis, with the aim of rebuilding their organization and thereafter establishing a Fourth Reich in order to fulfill Hitler’s unrealized dreams. But for all that Forsyth’s book is an engrossing read, and that the plot involves some genuine historical facts, ultimately the novel is only fiction. The truth, on the other hand, now that so many top-secret documents have been declassified and so many scholars have pored over the details, is probably stranger even than Forsyth’s fiction. The real story involves an intimate collaboration of organizations as varied as the Catholic Church, the Argentine government (under president Juan Domingo Perón) and the Allied intelligence services.
As World War II began to draw to a close, it swiftly became apparent that large numbers of Nazi SS (who, due to the nature and magnitude of their war crimes, knew that surrender was not an option), together with those who were sympathetic to their cause, were fleeing Germany for sanctuary abroad in Spain, Portugal, Switzerland and Italy. The SS was the army within an army, devised by Adolf Hitler and commanded by Heinrich Himmler, which was charged with ‘special tasks’ during the Nazi rule in Germany between 1933 to 1945. These ‘tasks’ supposedly revolved around the promotion and protection of the Third Reich, but in reality were far more concerned with achieving Hitler’s ultimate ambition, to rid first Germany and afterwards the rest of Europe of elements he considered undesirable. As a result, the SS executed in the region of fourteen million people – among them approximately six million Jews, five million Russians, two million Poles and a mix of gypsies, the mentally unstable, infirm and physically handicapped.
No wonder, then, that as the war drew to a close and Germany anticipated defeat, the men who had perpetrated or supported such inhuman acts knew that the civilized world would want retribution for their evil acts. They had no choice but to flee their homeland if they wanted to escape with their lives. For this they needed not only a support network made up of men and women sympathetic to their plight, but substantial amounts of money. To this end it is believed that on August 10, 1944 a secret meeting of top German industrialists (including steel magnate Fritz Thyssen, who bankrolled Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s) convened at the Maison Rouge hotel in Strasbourg. What they discussed has always remained secret, but the main outcome of the meeting was the establishment of a support network to aid and abet the escape of as many high-ranking Nazi officials as possible. Eminent figures such as Adolf Eichmann (head of the Jewish Office of the Gestapo), who was responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jewish men, women and children, felt the Allied net tightening and the need for escape paramount. Nor were his fears unfounded for, in the Soviet Union, war-crimes trials involving German officers responsible for the deaths of Jewish citizens had already begun. Taking the Russians’ lead, the Western Allied forces also announced their intention of punishing all those involved in war crimes.
By April 1945, with the Red Army advancing on Berlin, many SS officers began creating the sort of fake documents they would need to flee the country under assumed identities. Neutral Spain was the initial destination of choice. French, Belgian and German Nazis or Nazi sympathizers turned up there in their droves, including Charles Lesca who would later become a key figure in the secretive Odessa organization.
Lesca had been born in Argentina, but had lived the greater part of his life in Europe, mixing with various key Nazis including the German Ambassador to Paris, Otto Abetz, as well as high-ranking Vichy officials. When he eventually fled Berlin for Madrid he settled at 4 Victor Hugo Street from where, after the electoral victory of Perón in 1946, it is believed Lesca began the systematic transportation of ‘all possible German intelligence officers to Argentina.’1 But the first person to use Lesca’s escape route was not a high-ranking Nazi official; instead, Carlos Reuter was a middle-aged banker who had recruited agents for the German intelligence service in occupied Paris. His journey began in late January 1946, taking him from Bilbao to Buenos Aires. The escape route was deemed a success and opened the gateway for many more fugitives, yet none of these ‘escapes’ could have been possible without Argentina’s backing or the full approval of President Juan Domingo Perón.
This Argentine immigration document from 1949, bears the name ‘Helmut Greger,’ the alias adopted by the ‘Angel of Death’ Dr. Joseph Mengele when Odessa helped him to flee from war-crimes trials in Europe.
Perón, as an ultra right-wing politician, had long been a supporter of Hitler and of the Nazi regime. With the aid of his military chiefs he had sought and established a secret alliance with Hitler in 1943, one that guaranteed mutual benefits. On Perón’s side, Hitler allowed the Argentine military full access to the Nazi intelligence service’s powerful communications network, thus enabling Argentina to spy on her neighbors. This was no small gift, but Perón also gave generously in return. He guaranteed Hitler indefinite freedom from arrest for all Nazi officials in Argentina. The deal was struck and a lifelong bond sealed, despite the fact that in January 1944 the Allies persuaded Argentina to break off all diplomatic ties with Germany. All was not, however, as it seemed, for even though Argentina went as far as to declare war on Germany one month before Hitler’s suicide in Berlin in April 1945, the reality of the situation was that Perón only struck this pose to distract the Allies from the fact that he had begun setting up escape routes for Nazi fugitives. As he himself said:
[ …] if Argentina becomes a belligerent country, it has the right to enter Germany when the end arrives; this means that our planes and ships would be in a position to render a great service. At that point we had the commercial planes of the FAMA line [Argentine Merchant Air Fleet] and the ships we had bought from Italy during the war. This is how a great number of people were able to come to Argentina.2
Another route by which ‘a great number of people were able’ to escape to Argentina was via Perón’s newly established DAIE (Delegation for Argentine Immigration in Europe) which he set up in Italy, with its main offices split between Rome and Genoa. Ostensibly, the organization was there to facilitate the emigration of Italians and other Europeans to Argentina, but covertly it was processing all the false documentation that was required by fleeing Nazis before they left Europe for South America. Although the DAIE was extremely efficient, prior to approaching it any prospective émigré also had to obtain a landing permit from the Argentine Immigration Office as well as a travel permit from the Red Cross. Acquiring a Red Cross permit using a false name was not as difficult as it might at first seem because the Red Cross documents were intended for refugees who had lost all other forms of identification. Armed with all of the above it was relatively straightforward for the unscrupulous Nazi fugitive to gain entry into his newly-adopted country. Without the offices of, among others, the Catholic Church both in Europe and in Argentina, however, Perón’s plans would never have reached fruition.
The Most Evil Secret Societies in History Page 17
