TOKYO –
Kozo Okamoto, a member of the Japanese Red Army who took half in a 1972 mass capturing at an Israeli airport, has died at age 78 in Lebanon, the place he had lived for many years beneath political asylum.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine introduced on July 23 that Okamoto had died in Beirut, the Lebanese capital.
Okamoto was certainly one of three Japanese gunmen who opened fireplace and threw grenades at Lod Airport, now Ben Gurion International Airport, close to Tel Aviv on May 30, 1972. The assault killed 26 folks and injured dozens, with the victims together with 17 Christian pilgrims from Puerto Rico, eight Israelis and a Canadian citizen. The three attackers had traveled from Europe carrying rifles and grenades of their baggage.
The assault was carried out collectively by the Japanese Red Army and the PFLP, a Palestinian Marxist group. The use of Japanese attackers was meant to evade airport safety targeted totally on potential threats from Palestinian teams.
Okamoto was wounded and captured, whereas the opposite two attackers, Tsuyoshi Okudaira and Yasuyuki Yasuda, had been killed. An Israeli court docket sentenced Okamoto to life imprisonment, however he was launched in 1985 as a part of a prisoner change between Israel and Palestinian armed teams after serving about 12 years. He later settled in Lebanon and was granted political asylum.
The Japanese Red Army emerged from the violent wing of Japan’s New Left motion, which grew out of scholar protests and opposition to the nation’s political institution and safety alliance with the United States in the course of the Nineteen Sixties.
Its ideological roots may be traced to the Red Army Faction, an extremist group fashioned in 1969 by militants who believed that armed battle was essential to overthrow Japan’s authorities and set off a world communist revolution.
The faction rejected parliamentary politics and peaceable protest, arguing that revolution ought to be superior by assaults, hijackings, hostage-taking and cooperation with armed actions abroad. Police crackdowns and mass arrests weakened the group in Japan, whereas some members moved overseas looking for allies, weapons and army coaching.
Fusako Shigenobu, who turned the best-known chief of the Japanese Red Army, traveled to the Middle East in 1971 and developed shut relations with the PFLP. Her group sought to hyperlink Japan’s revolutionary motion with Palestinian and different worldwide struggles, describing its goal as a worldwide revolution towards capitalism, imperialism and the prevailing state system.
Although the Japanese Red Army was typically confused with the United Red Army, the 2 had been separate organizations. The United Red Army operated primarily inside Japan and have become infamous for the killing of 14 of its personal members throughout ideological purges earlier than the Asama-Sanso hostage siege in Nagano Prefecture in 1972. Shigenobu’s Japanese Red Army was based mostly largely abroad and targeting worldwide operations.
The Lod Airport assault introduced the Japanese Red Army worldwide consideration and marked the start of a collection of hijackings, embassy seizures and hostage incidents in the course of the Seventies.
In July 1973, Japanese Red Army and Palestinian militants hijacked a Japan Airlines plane touring from Amsterdam to Tokyo. The aircraft was finally flown to Libya, the place the passengers and crew had been launched earlier than the plane was destroyed.
Members of the group stormed the French Embassy in The Hague in September 1974, taking the ambassador and different folks hostage. The siege ended after France agreed to launch an imprisoned Japanese Red Army member and supply the attackers with an plane.
In August 1975, gunmen seized hostages at a constructing housing a number of overseas embassies in Kuala Lumpur. Japan launched imprisoned radicals in response to the attackers’ calls for, permitting them to depart the nation.
The group carried out one other main hijacking in September 1977, when members seized a Japan Airlines plane after it departed Paris and compelled it to land in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The Japanese authorities agreed to pay a ransom and launch a number of prisoners in change for the hostages, a call that later turned a supply of political controversy.
At its top, the Japanese Red Army remained a small group, with solely a number of dozen core members, however its worldwide partnerships allowed it to conduct assaults far past what its dimension may in any other case have permitted. It depended closely on Palestinian organizations for bases, coaching, logistical help and entry to weapons.
The group offered its violence as a part of a global revolutionary marketing campaign, however its assaults incessantly focused or endangered civilians. Governments together with Japan and the United States labeled it as a terrorist group, and Japanese police continued looking for fugitive members many years after the group’s most energetic interval.
The Japanese Red Army’s operational capability declined in the course of the Nineteen Eighties and Nineteen Nineties as worldwide safety cooperation elevated, Palestinian political situations modified and members had been arrested or expelled from nations the place that they had been based mostly.
Lebanese authorities detained Okamoto and 4 different Japanese Red Army members in 1997 on allegations associated to solid paperwork and unlawful residency. Four had been later deported to Japan, however Lebanon granted Okamoto political asylum, stopping his extradition regardless of repeated requests from Japanese authorities.
Shigenobu was arrested in Osaka Prefecture in November 2000 after secretly returning to Japan utilizing false paperwork. While in detention, she introduced in April 2001 that the Japanese Red Army had been dissolved and mentioned future political exercise ought to be pursued by authorized means. She was later sentenced to twenty years in jail in reference to the 1974 French Embassy siege and was launched in May 2022.
Okamoto made few public appearances throughout his years in Lebanon. One of probably the most outstanding got here in May 2022, when he attended an occasion at a Beirut cemetery marking the fiftieth anniversary of the airport assault. Palestinian supporters regarded him as an emblem of solidarity with their trigger, whereas Japan continued to record him as a wished suspect.
His loss of life leaves the 1972 airport bloodbath because the defining occasion of his life and some of the infamous episodes within the historical past of Japanese political extremism.
Source: FNN