It is important to prepare for the threat of future terrorism by learning from the lessons of the past.
It has been 25 years since the sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system by the Aum Supreme Truth doomsday cult. In the attack, highly toxic sarin gas was released into the subway system, killing 13 people and injuring more than 6,000.
The world was shocked by the unprecedented chemical terrorism. The myth of Japan's safety can be said to have been shaken by the incident.
The incident raised the issue of how to deal with chemical terrorism. Police units that respond to nuclear, biological and chemical terrorism have been established in Tokyo and eight prefectural police headquarters across the country. In addition, various organizations have deepened their cooperation beyond their boundaries, including joint exercises with the Self-Defense Forces and fire departments. Regulations on the trading of poisonous and deleterious substances were also tightened.
At the time of the incident, doctors scrambled to save the victims with little knowledge of what they were dealing with. Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, letters containing anthrax were sent to the U.S. Capitol and other locations. Terrorism using viruses and bacteria is also a concern.
The establishment of a medical system capable of coping with every possible situation is required.
The cult had planned to use a helicopter to spray sarin gas over the capital. Now, small drones can carry harmful objects to a target. In Venezuela, there was an incident in 2018 involving a drone carrying explosives being set off in midair while the president was giving a speech.
If nuclear power plants and industrial complexes are targeted, serious damage could result. Development is in progress on detectors that use drones' electromagnetic waves to identify flight points and on devices that use jamming waves to disable control of drones. It is necessary to be prepared for attacks from the sky.
Watch homegrown threats
In recent years, there have been some conspicuous cases abroad in which soft targets, such as train stations and theaters, where an indefinite large number of people gather, have been targeted. Terrorist attacks in Paris and Belgium involving the radical militant group Islamic State are still fresh in our minds.
To prevent such terrorist attacks, the development of systems using artificial intelligence to detect suspicious individuals has attracted attention. It is said that the AI is capable of measuring slight tremors of a human body among other signs to identify terrorists who are in a state of excitement before committing a crime. It is urged to improve the accuracy of the system toward its practical use.
The sarin gas attack on the subway system was committed by young people who gathered at the end of the century to ask for help from the cult, which advocated the idea of doomsday. Even today, there is no end to the number of young people joining Aum's successor organizations.
It should also be noted that the spread of cult-like ideas has become easier with the proliferation of the internet.
The threat of homegrown terrorism, in which terrorists launch attacks in their own countries under the influence of foreign extremism through the internet, is also increasing. The police and other authorities concerned should not lower their vigilance.
-- The original Japanese article appeared in The Yomiuri Shimbun on March 21, 2020
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
