AUM SHINRIKYO, the Japanese doomsday sect that killed 12 people by releasing
sarin nerve gas into the Tokyo subway in 1996, had the knowledge and skills to
wreak even greater devastation with anthrax. New research in the US shows that
Aum not only had the ability to release anthrax, it even did so鈥攖hough it
used a non-virulent strain.
The sect cultured the bacteria in large drums of liquid in the basement of
its eight-storey headquarters in the Tokyo suburb of Kameido, says Hiroshi
Takahashi of Japan鈥檚 National Institute of Infectious Diseases. Then, in July
1993, Aum members pumped the liquid to the roof and sprayed it into the air for
24 hours
The police investigated when neighbours complained about the smell, but
Japan鈥檚 religious protection laws prevented them from searching the building.
But they did manage to take samples of a fluid leaking from a pipe on the
outside of the building.
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Medical records show that no one reported any anthrax symptoms in the area
after the spraying, Takahashi told an anthrax conference in Annapolis, Maryland,
in June. The fact that Aum was unable to infect people with anthrax is cited by
many terrorism experts as evidence that bioweapons are too complex for such
extremists.
But now scientists at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff have analysed
the fluid sample and found it contains plenty of healthy anthrax bacilli. DNA
analysis shows they belong to the Sterne strain, which is used in live anthrax
vaccines for animals. Sterne anthrax lacks a fragment of DNA necessary for the
bacteria to cause disease, and is easily purchased in the vaccine form. 鈥淚t
wouldn鈥檛 have made anyone sick,鈥� says Kimothy Smith, a member of the team.
Why would terrorists spray harmless bacteria? They may have been practising,
says Smith. Police attention could have discouraged them from moving on to
virulent bacteria. Worryingly, the results show that Aum had got around the main
difficulties with bioweapons鈥攄ead cultures and inadequate spraying. 鈥淚
have no doubt people would have been sick, and probably died, if they had used a
virulent strain,鈥� says Smith.
鈥淢ost terrorists still prefer explosives or arson,鈥� says David Claridge, a
terrorism specialist at Rubicon, a security consultancy in London. One of the
few exceptions, he fears, might be people committing hate crimes.
This scenario will be played out in the drama Gas Attack, to be
screened on Britain鈥檚 Channel 4 this month. It shows racial extremists killing
Kurdish asylum seekers in Glasgow with lethal anthrax taken from animal
carcasses. 鈥淭hat would be feasible,鈥� says Smith. 鈥淵ou can make the culture
medium in the kitchen.鈥�