In March of 1995, the group called Aum Shinrikyo released nerve gas in the Tokyo subway system, killing 12, injuring thousands, and creating a climate of fear which spread far beyond Japan. Four years later, the sect is apparently strong and growing, and there are serious, unanswered questions about the government's conduct in the case. PNS associate editor Yoichi Clark Shimatsu is an investigative reporter and former editor of the English-language Japan Times Weekly in Tokyo.

TOKYO -- It's the weekend. In a pub on the western fringe of the metropolis, a band is playing to an audience that is young, middle-class, Japanese, in stylish casual wear. Three female singers alternatively dressed as schoolgirls or in saris, sing in cutesy style and dance with sexy innocence. A karaoke number is followed by acid rock. The lead guitarist does Jimi Hendrix licks with talent and passion.

The band is Kanzen Gedatsu (Absolute Liberation), and they call their repertoire "astral music." All of it is composed by Shoko Asahara, the bearded guru of Aum Shinrikyo, the sect responsible for releasing nerve gas in Tokyo's subways just four years ago.

It is the eve of the millennium, and these Aum Shinrikyo followers, in the audience and on stage, believe they will be among the survivors.

The March 20, 1995 attack, which left at least 12 dead and many thousands injured -- is behind them. Many of their fellow believers are emerging from the Tokyo Kosuge maximum-security prison after serving sentences for their alleged involvement. They are eagerly awaiting the release in a few months of Fumihiro Joyu, their spokesman, considered a folk hero against authoritarianism and conformism by Japan's younger generation.

According to police, the sect is regrouping and growing.

Aum members express no remorse for the crimes of four years ago. "Some of our leaders may have been guilty," says 10-year sect veteran Kaori Yoshida, "but at the time most of our members had no idea of what was going on. And there's a strong possibility that Aum Shinrikyo members did not commit any of the crimes they are accused of."

Akira Kurata, recently released from solitary confinement, agrees. "Between 70 to 80 percent of the prosecutor's charges against me were fabrications."

Indeed all of the several dozen convictions so far have been decided solely on the basis of public prosecutors' scenarios or, in a handful of cases, on confessions. Not just sect members but attorneys, academics and journalists are concerned about these trials. A spokesman for the Japan Civil Liberties Unions said, "The police orchestrated a 'trial by media' before the actual trials began. Sect members were presumed guilty from the start."

Aum tribunals have failed to respect the most basic standards of jurisprudence, for example, ignoring these facts:

• Japan's top chemists and U.S. experts long ago concluded that the sect's chemical plant could not have produced nerve gas because it had no ventilation system.

• Thousands of commuters must have seen the subway assailants, but not a single witness has been called to testify.

• Political connections. Aum activities and its religious license were sponsored by some of Japan's highest-ranking politicians and bureaucrats.

• Inter-sect relations. Four other new religions were deeply linked to Aum, including a sect that boasts support from a former U.S. president and another that has channeled funds to Harvard.

• Japan's national drug-enforcement police, which suspected the sect's plant had been built to produce illicit drugs, was never allowed by Tokyo police to inspect the facility.

"Ninety percent of the Aum affair remains hidden, and perhaps the truth will never be known," says a respected European correspondent who has been stationed in Tokyo for more than a dozen years. "It now appears that Aum was merely a part of a larger geopolitical struggle."

The seeds of doubt planted by the clumsy official cover-up immediately after the subway attack four years ago have since grown into a forest of suspicion.

But Aum members and even sect dropouts are facing more immediate uncertainties. Former convict Kurata says, "Although I quit the sect, the police still harassed me after I got out of prison and prevented me from integrating into society. There's nothing I can do about it. So for me the only thing that's left is to keep on meditating."

"I don't know what the future holds for me," says sect veteran Kaori Yoshida, who worked as an editor at a publishing firm until the police pressured the publisher to fire her. "But over the coming year, I'll just be focusing on getting through the millennium."