Aleph says the crimes were the acts of individuals. The state says the group is the same group.
Aleph's public material treats 1994 and 1995 as the work of members who have since been tried and executed, and points to the compensation it pays. The Public Security Intelligence Agency treats Aleph as the same organisation under a different name, with the same object of devotion. A reader is entitled to both statements and to the fact that they conflict.
A reader deserves to know that the two accounts of Aleph conflict at the centre and that one of them comes from a state agency with an institutional interest in continued surveillance and the other from an organisation with an institutional interest in being left alone. The Public Security Intelligence Agency publishes its findings and its membership figures; Aleph publishes statements, legal filings and information about compensation. Japanese journalists and scholars have moved between the two for twenty-five years without settling it. What is not in dispute is that the legal identity is continuous — Aleph is Aum under a different name, and Japanese law says so explicitly.
The same ground, other faiths
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