Japanese Cult’s No. 2 Official Fatally Stabbed : Asia: Knifing victim had headed chemical work of group linked to Tokyo poison gas attack.

A man armed with a kitchen knife Sunday fatally stabbed a top official of Aum Supreme Truth, the cult suspected of the deadly nerve gas attack on Tokyo’s subways, in the latest outbreak of violence shaking this normally placid nation.

In full view of reporters and police surrounding Aum’s Tokyo headquarters, the man lunged forward and stabbed Hideo Murai, 36, the group’s No. 2 official and head of its chemical operations. Murai underwent surgery for deep stab wounds through the stomach nearly to his back, requiring massive blood transfusions, but died early today.

Murai was believed to have held the key to whether the group manufactured and released the sarin nerve gas in an attack that killed 12 and sickened more than 5,500 commuters last month.

Police immediately arrested Hiroyuki Jo, 29, a South Korean national. Jo reportedly told police he had joined a rightist group last year and “wanted to hurt an Aum leader.”

He bought the eight-inch-long carving knife the day before the attack and then waited for an Aum leader to show up Sunday, police told the Japanese media. After the attack, he dropped his knife and waited for police to arrest him.

Television footage showed Murai, dressed in the cult’s collarless pale green garb, virtually unfazed by the attack. Even after he was stabbed, he kept walking and did not utter a sound, witnesses said.

In a news conference today, Aum spokesmen decried the attack and questioned whether it was an individual act or one planned by a group.

“Why didn’t the police protect him?” demanded Yoshinobu Aoyama, the cult’s lawyer. “They could have predicted this kind of thing.” Aum spokesman Fumihiro Joyu hinted that the attacker may have been involved in a conspiracy rather than an individual act of vigilantism.

The attack is the latest in a bizarre string of violence that has set this nation on edge and caused it to question its fabled public safety.

Since last year, there have been at least five attacks of poison or foul-smelling gas against the public, including the Tokyo incident March 20, two subsequent cases in the nearby port city of Yokohama and an attack in a residential neighborhood in the city of Matsumoto last summer.

In addition, the head of Japan’s National Police Agency was shot and wounded in the most serious attack against a public official since World War II.

The police, who have not arrested any suspects directly connected to any of the gas cases, are coming under growing pressure to make a move.

The Japanese media reported over the weekend that they are closing in on top leaders--including founder Shoko Asahara--and intend to file formal charges accusing Aum of conspiracy to commit mass murder by the “Golden Week” holidays of the first week of May.

Authorities have reportedly amassed extensive circumstantial evidence implicating Aum, including seized equipment and chemicals similar to those found at the scene of the subway gassing.

Murai took graduate courses in astrophysics at prestigious Osaka University and worked for a major steelmaker before joining Aum.

In interviews before his death, he denied that Aum was involved in the gas attacks and said it had amassed the chemicals to make pesticides.