Police Probe Focuses on Sect’s In-House Corps of Elite Scientists : Japan: Computer disks from cult’s ‘Science and Technology Ministry’ are seized.

After finding ingredients that could be used for chemical and biological warfare, police are focusing their investigation on a group of elite scientists in the religious cult that is suspected in last week’s deadly nerve gas attack on the subways here.

Authorities have seized computer disks, labeled with the name of Aum Supreme Truth’s “Science and Technology Ministry,” and supplies of chemicals and solvents allegedly used to make nerve gas. Police searches this week at the sect compound have also turned up cultures for a deadly bacteria and seven cult members with abnormal conditions, sparking fears that the cult was conducting gruesome tests of chemical and biological weapons on its own members.

Highly educated chemists, biologists, doctors and computer programmers are helping the doomsday group prepare to survive the end of world, Supreme Truth pamphlets say.

Scientists from Japan’s top universities are featured in a sect promotional video wearing the group’s distinctive white, Indian-style clothing and talking about achieving enlightenment, aided by high-tech treatments. Many sect members sport electronic headgear, said to synchronize their brain waves with those of group leader Shoko Asahara.

“They’re like mad scientists in a horror movie,” a chemistry professor said after hearing of a paralyzing toxic bacteria, clostridium botulinus , found at Supreme Truth’s complex. “But this is real life.”

The cult’s scientific bent helps it keep one foot in everyday society while allegedly pushing the outer limits at secret laboratories. Supreme Truth owns a chain of computer stores and a Tokyo hospital, and it claims to manufacture semiconductors.

One of its computer shops blends innocuously into the middle of Tokyo’s vibrant discount electronics district, selling Mahaposya (Sanskrit for great benefit ) brand alongside Apples and IBMs.

Supreme Truth is as familiar with cyberspace as it may be with the Buddha’s astral world: Its 25 branches are linked by computer and reportedly have flashed warnings of impending police raids via e-mail.

Another sect-linked store is on the ground floor of the group’s Tokyo headquarters in the posh Aoyama area. This week, after suspicions about sect involvement in the sarin nerve gas attack were revealed, the building’s glass doors were bashed in. A group member guarding the entry said he also had to fight off “bad people with knives.”

The guard--a gaunt young man wearing a gray sweat shirt, plaid flannel pants and turquoise socks--said he was an artist before he joined Supreme Truth.

But many Supreme Truth followers have technical or scientific backgrounds, say religion experts who have tracked the group.

“In the past, the older religions were characterized by miracles and supernatural phenomenon, or they heard God’s word through revelation,” psychologist Shigeru Matsumoto said. That mystical appeal has been replaced by pseudo-scientific phenomena, he said.

Koa Tasaka, assistant professor of chemistry at Tokyo’s International Christian University, blames Japan’s education system for making young people more susceptible to modern cults’ psychedelic appeal.

“Science education, especially in graduate school in Japan, tends to be just research oriented,” he said. “It produces people who are interested in chemical reactions only. That is wrong. We should teach these people more common sense and ethical values--at present they lack that aspect. They don’t have the power to differentiate what’s illegal and what’s proper.”

There were media reports Wednesday suggesting that sect members who had died during biological or chemical experiments or during some of the group’s harsh, bizarre rites had been secretly cremated and had their ashes scattered. Authorities declined to discuss these reports.

The sect denies any connection to the March 20 subway attack that killed 10 and afflicted more than 5,000 commuters. Supreme Truth members said their chemicals were used to make fertilizer, pottery glaze, Buddha statues and computer chips.

No arrests have been made, but police are gathering other evidence to charge group members with “preparation for murder.”