Japanese hijackers returning at N. Korea's prompting: Yao

0 Comments | Asian Political News, July 22, 2002

TOKYO, July 18 Kyodo

The wife of a former member of the Red Army Faction who helped hijack a plane to North Korea in 1970 said Thursday four hijackers seeking to return to Japan may be acting at the insistence of Pyongyang, according to a group of Japanese lawmakers.

Megumi Yao, a 46-year-old former bar owner, made the statement to a project team of the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) that is examining the Japanese government's handling of North Korea's alleged abductions of Japanese nationals and other issues involving the secluded country.

''North Korea spent a lot of money educating the hijackers on ideology and taking care of them. But now they have become useless (to the authorities),'' Yao told the team at a Diet members' office building in Tokyo, according to the lawmakers.

''They've decided to return with North Korea's intentions in mind,'' she was quoted as saying.

Four former members of the Red Army Faction are requesting to return to Japan from North Korea for the first time since they hijacked a Japan Airlines plane to the country in March 1970.

Senior government officials have indicated the four, still wanted by Japanese police in connection with the hijacking, would be arrested on their return to Japan.

At Thursday's meeting, Yao also explained to lawmakers the circumstances surrounding the alleged 1983 abduction of Keiko Arimoto, a 23-year-old college student whom Yao said she helped kidnap at the request of the hijackers' group.

Yao said she appeared at the DPJ meeting to ''get people interested in the abduction issue'' and ''ask the state to act in a stern manner and protect the lives and rights of the Japanese,'' the lawmakers said.

The DPJ set up the lawmakers' group the same day to study North Korean refugees and humanitarian issues.

The group has about 50 members from both chambers of the Diet and is headed by House of Representatives lawmaker Masaharu Nakagawa.