Ex-Aum Death-Row Inmate Publishes VX Research Paper

May 24, 2018

Tokyo- Tomomasa Nakagawa, a former senior member of doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo now on death row, has published a research paper on the deadly VX nerve agent, it was learned Wednesday.

The paper on VX, used in the 2017 assassination of Kim Jong Nam, the exiled half brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, in Malaysia, was written jointly by Anthony Tu, honorary professor at Colorado State University. It was published in a digital edition of the Japanese journal Forensic Toxicology on Monday.

In the murder, assailants are believed to have smeared two less toxic substances on the victim's face and mixed them in order to generate VX, the paper said.

The method is different from a technique to produce VX by mixing substances that was developed by the U.S. Army, according to the paper.

Pointing to three VX attacks committed by Aum in Japan between 1994 and 1995, the paper warned that the possibility that toxic nerve agents such as VX will be used in future terror attacks must not be ignored.

According to Tu, Nakagawa decided to write the paper in English, hoping that it will be read both in and outside Japan.

He was very delighted to hear that the paper was accepted this month by the Japanese Association of Forensic Toxicology, the publisher of the journal, Tu said.

Nakagawa, a former doctor, was sentenced to death in 2011 for his involvement in VX and sarin attacks including the 1995 sarin attack on Tokyo's subway system.

In March this year, he was transferred from the Tokyo Detention House to the Hiroshima Detention House in western Japan. Jiji Press