Kozo Okamoto

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Kozo Okamoto (岡本公三 Okamoto Kōzō) was a member of the Japanese armed militant group, Japanese Red Army (JRA).

Kozo Okamoto (L) and Fusako Shigenobu, leader of the JRA at a press conference

On May 30, 1972, Kozo Okamoto along with Yasuyuki Yasuda, and Tsuyoshi Okudaira, arrived at Israel's Lod Airport in Tel Aviv, via Air France Flight 132 from San Juan, Puerto Rico. After disembarking from the plane, the three members of the JRA proceeded to the baggage claim area. Upon retrieving their luggage, they took out automatic weapons, which had been packed inside the suitcases, and proceeded to open fire on other passengers in the baggage claim area.

The attack was a joint operation of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Japanese Red Army. The idea behind the joint effort was for the Japanese to carry out attacks for the Palestinians, and vice versa, in order to reduce suspicion. The plan worked, as Okamoto and his comrades attracted little attention prior to their attack.

They killed 26 people and injured 78 others. Yasuyuki Yasuda was killed in the attack when he ran out of ammunition. Tsuyoshi Okudaira committed suicide by placing a grenade against his body. Kozo Okamoto was captured trying to escape the terminal. The attack became known as the Lod Airport Massacre. The victims were almost all Puerto Rican Christians on a pilgrimage to Israel.

In the letter claiming official responsibility for the attack carried out by the Japanese Red Army, the PFLP referred to it as Operation Deir Yassin. This was to portray it as revenge for the 1948 Deir Yassin massacre by Jewish Irgun members on Palestinian civilians in the Deir Yassin village. The letter also stated that the operation was carried out by the Squad of the Martyr Patrick Arguello. Patrick Arguello had been shot and killed two years earlier, on September 6, 1970 on an Israeli El Al jet he had attempted to hijack together with PFLP member Leila Khaled.

Kozo Okamoto after his release, being carried by Palestinians

Kozo Okamoto was sentenced to life imprisonment in Israel, but was released in 1985 after 13 years, as part of a prisoner exchange with Palestinian militant factions. After his release from prison in Israel, Kozo Okamoto moved to Libya, then Syria, and finally to Lebanon where he reunited with other members of the Japanese Red Army.

On February 15, 1997, Lebanon detained five Red Army members, Haruo Wako, Masao Adachi, Mariko Yamamoto, Kazuo Tohira and Kozo Okamoto for using forged passports and visa violations. They were sentenced to three years in prison. The sentence was passed by Judge Soheil Abdul-Sams on July 31, 1997. After their prison term was completed the four other members of the JRA were forcibly deported to Jordan and from Amman, Jordan via a chartered Russian plane to Japan. The Lebanese government, however, granted political asylum to Kozo Okamoto because he "had participated in resistance operations against Israel and had been tortured in Israeli jails." ^[1]

Kozo Okamoto is still wanted by the Japanese government. It has been requested that he be extradited to Japan. This request was not made when Kozo Okamoto was a prisoner in Israel, at a time when presumably the extradition had a greater chance of being given.

Former Japanese Red Army members Kozo Okamoto (C), Kazuo Tohira (R) and Haruo Wako (L) pose during the wedding of Masao Adachi in Roumieh prison near Beirut, February 22, 2000, [1]