Kozo Okamoto, a Japanese militant who helped carry out a deadly attack on an Israeli airport on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), has died in Beirut, the group said.
The PFLP referred to him as Ahmad Al Yabani, or Ahmad the Japanese, calling him a “comrade” who made “enormous sacrifices that spanned long decades in the struggle for Palestine” after his death, aged 78, in the Lebanese capital on Thursday.
Okamoto participated in a deadly shooting attack on the airport in Tel Aviv in 1972 as a member of the communist Japanese Red Army (JRA) guerrilla group founded the previous year. The attack at Lod Airport, now known as Ben Gurion Airport, killed 26 people.
The JRA was operating mostly out of Lebanon and was responsible for several high-profile attacks including the hijacking of planes belonging to Japan Airlines and a takeover of the US consulate in Malaysia.
Okamoto served 13 years in Israeli prison for his role in the deadly airport attack, in which 76 people were also injured. He was freed in 1985 in a prisoner exchange between Israel and Palestinian guerrillas. After moving to Syria and Libya, he was granted asylum in Lebanon for “participating in resistance operations against Israel and being tortured in Israeli prisons”, and converted to Islam. He remained in close contact with members of the PFLP.
Before his death, he was wanted in Japan where authorities had contacted Interpol for help to bring about his arrest. During a trial in Lebanon on charges of forgery to enter the country illegally, Okamoto called himself an “Arab resistance fighter”. He was lauded by the PFLP for his support of the Palestinian cause.
Established in 1967, the PFLP is part of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). It is an offshoot of the Arab Nationalist Movement and was founded after the 1967 war by George Habash, a Palestinian Greek-Orthodox Christian.
