Ex-Aum death-row inmate publishes VX research paper
Jiji -- May 24
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.

News source: Jiji