Red Army hijacker may have been killed by colleagues

Japan Policy & Politics, July 26, 1999

TOKYO, July 20 Kyodo

An internationally wanted Japanese terrorist leader has suggested one of the nine Red Army faction members who defected to North Korea after hijacking a plane in 1970 was killed by fellow hijackers, supporters of the leader said Tuesday. Fusako Shigenobu, the 53-year-old leader of the Japanese Red Army she founded in 1971, said Takeshi Okamoto, who reportedly died around 1988, was "purged just as with the case of the United Red Army," the supporters told Kyodo News. The militant United Red Army, a combination of a segment of the Red Army faction and other groups, killed 14 of its members between 1971 and 1972. Japanese public security authorities said they were aware of Shigenobu's comments. The nine Japanese Red Army faction members hijacked a Japan Airlines (JAL) plane with 131 people and seven crew members aboard during a flight from Tokyo to Fukuoka on March 31, 1970. The passengers were released unhurt in Seoul, and the plane continued on to Pyongyang where the nine defected. Supporters of the hijackers said in their magazine published in December 1996 that Okamoto and his wife told fellow group members in the early 1980s they wanted to work at a factory or a farm, and left the group after being convinced not to work. "In 1988, after they left us, they died accidentally in a landslide," the publication said. But observers have noted as a result of contacts with sources close to the hijackers that Okamoto, born in July 1945, had a falling out with other hijackers in 1983 and was handed to North Korea's Workers Party of Korea together with his wife. The couple reportedly died while trying to escape from North Korea, according to some observers. Shigenobu reportedly said, "We are of a different group and I'm not in a position to give a critique, but I think they (his fellow hijackers) are responsible for Okamoto's death. The Workers Party of Korea is apparently surprised at the situation." According to public security authorities, Shigenobu was a key member of the Red Army faction, the parent body of the Japanese Red Army. In 1971, she went to Lebanon to link up with a Palestinian guerrilla group. Thereafter, Shigenobu ordered a number of terrorist activities, including the seizure of the French Embassy in The Hague in 1974 when the leftist group took the French ambassador hostage and won the release of one imprisoned comrade before fleeing to Syria. She is currently believed to be traveling back and forth between Syria and Lebanon. Okamoto is the older brother of Kozo Okamoto, 51, a Japanese Red Army member currently incarcerated in Lebanon.