TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese police on Wednesday raided buildings occupied by a doomsday cult that government officials have likened to Aum Shinrikyo, the group that carried out a deadly gas attack on the Tokyo subway eight years ago.
The search was an attempt to gauge the potential threat posed by the white-clad group, Japanese media said, although for now the cult is being investigated only on suspicion of the minor offence of registering vehicles under a false name.
"The search is nationwide, but we cannot link it to any other offences," said a spokesman for Tokyo police.
The cult, which calls itself Pana Wave Laboratory, is reported to have said it expects the world to end later this month and that communists are trying to kill 69-year-old group leader Yuko Chino by using electromagnetic waves.
"We are being attacked by communists," Chino told Japanese television in her first-ever interview, conducted inside the narrow van, strewn with pillows, that has been her home in recent weeks. "We will fight back."
Graying hair falling to her shoulders, Chino alternated comments about how she had used a special moisturizing cream to minimize her wrinkles for the camera with apocalyptic predictions of the end of the world.
"Within a year the Earth will be destroyed and neither Japan nor humankind will exist," she said, when asked about the future of the cult. "I think the question of our group disbanding is not an issue."
Pana Wave's convoy of white vehicles became a fixture on Japanese television in recent weeks as it made its way around the countryside, frequently being physically barred from entering towns and villages by nervous residents.
Cult members surrounded themselves with huge white sheets whenever their convoy came to a halt, saying this would protect them from the electromagnetic waves.
Pana Wave Laboratory's headquarters are in Fukui, 200 miles west of Tokyo.
Chino recently released a statement urging people to protect Tama-chan, a bearded seal that has become a national mascot since appearing in rivers near Tokyo, far from its natural habitat in the icy Bering Sea. Domestic media reports have expressed concern that Pana Wave Laboratory was hoping to capture the animal.
Earlier this month, Japan's national police chief, Hidehiko Sato, referred to the cult's behavior as "grotesque" and reminiscent of the early days of Aum Shinrikyo.
Aum Shinrikyo, which also preached that the world was coming to an end, killed 12 people and injured 5,000, many severely, when members carried out a saran gas attack on the busy Tokyo subway system in 1995.