Chemical Weapson Essay Research Paper Title Chemical

Chemical Weapson Essay, Research Paper

Title (Chemical Weapons): Terrorist Use of Chemical Weapons in the World

Special Issue: The Tokyo Subway Attack on 20 March 1995

Introduction:

Japan has long enjoyed the enviable reputation of being one of the safest nations in the world. The country has one of the world lowest rates for murder and other violent crime, and the Japanese National Police Agency and local Police forces are often praised as a model of law enforcement efficiency. Tokyo enjoys one of the cleanest, safest and most efficient subway networks in the world. Trains run on precise schedules and accommodate 2.7 billion passengers a year. All that changed on March 20, 1995. A nightmare unfolded as the city of Tokyo experienced one of the worst terrorist attacks of the century. This is what many considered to be the first true case of use of chemical agents by terrorists in a major attack on civilians.

On the morning of 20 March 1995, small containers described by eyewitnesses as being wrapped in newspaper and covered with clear plastic bags about the size of lunch box were placed on five trains running on three major lines of the Tokyo subway system (Marunouchi, Chiyoda, and Hibiya). The trains were scheduled to arrive at the Kasumigaseki station within four minutes of each other at the height of the morning rush hour around 8 am in the morning. It was to report later that police authorities suspected the containers to be a type of binary chemical weapons in which the constituent elements of sarin were brought together to form the poisonous gas just prior to its release by breaking of the bottles in the crowed cars. The results were twelve people dead and over five thousand injured, as gas spread through the trains and affected passengers were disgorged at sixteenth separate stations along the route. Two of the subway lines were shut down and twenty-six stations closed.

The station, towards which the cars were gathering, Kasumigaseki was located in the heart of Tokyo’s government area, which is close to many Ministries, and the National Police Agency (NPA) Headquarters. Some commentators began to think that the attack was targeted on NPA officers. Some commentators evidently anticipated that the Tokyo attack was a prelude to the issuing of demands by the criminal. Commentators also expressed surprise that, given the toxicity of sarin and the nature of the target, the casualty had not in fact been much higher. Others suggested that the agent may simply have been impure, perhaps deliberately diluted either self-protection of the attackers or to keep the number of fatalities low. This theory appeared confirmed by the discovery early on the traces of another substance, acetonitrile (or methyl cyanide), which it could have been used to dilute the gas.

Some Unexplained Incidents:

In the days following the subway attack, as the casualty toll continued to rise, the Amu Shinri Kyo (or “Supreme Truth”), whose leader- Shoko Asahara, had in the past shown an interested in chemical and biological warfare. Two days after the attack, large numbers of police officers began massive raids on the sects many facilities throughout Japan, on the pretext of searching for kidnap victims (since there was no immediate evidence linking it to the subway attack). At one location particular, a compound or commune at Kamikuishiki in the surroundings of Mount Fuji 100 km west of Tokyo, they discovered extensive facilities for the manufacture of chemical weapons and huge stockpiles of the chemicals themselves, including all of the necessary ingredient for the manufacture of sarin. However, despite repeated searches over many days, the authorities were unable to come up with a “smoking gun” linking the sect directly to the Tokyo Subway Attack.

But there had been a series of unexplained incidents leading up to the subway attack that might have suggested that terrorists were experimenting with poisonous gas. The most significant of these occurred in the mountain resort of Matsumoto, 125 miles northwest of Tokyo, late in the evening of 27 June 1994. A substance later identified as sarin seeped through the open windows of apartments and houses, killing or injuring every living inside an area 500 yards long by 100 yards wide. Seven people died and 264 were injured. Suspicion initially fell on a former chemical salesman at whose residence various chemicals were seized, and who was believed to have released the gas accidentally in attempting to produce a homemade herbicide. However, police later dismissed him as a suspect and continued unsuccessfully to pursue what they considered to be a murder investigation.

A few months after the Matsumoto incident (but not reported until after the Tokyo attack), in September 1994 an anonymous letter had been sent to the Japanese media, hinting that nerve-gas attackers could target the Tokyo Dome. The letter was also said to have “correctly predicted that the next target would be Tokyo’s subways”. One listing of previous incidents notes, without providing any further details, that on 1 September 1994 “more than 230 people in western Japan suffered rashes and eye irritation from unknown fumes” (JT 1995). In a more widely-reported case, late on 5 March 1995, a colorless gas had filled a train car on the Keihin Kyuko rail line between Yokohama and Tokyo and overcome 19 of 80 passengers, the victim