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Satoshi Kirishima, a member of the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front, has been wanted for decades
Photo: Philip Fong / AFP
A man has turned himself in to Japanese police as he lay dying in a hospital after nearly 50 years on the run. According to police statements, he was part of a radical group that carried out bomb attacks on large Japanese companies in the 1970s.
He wanted to die under his real name
Following a tip-off, police questioned the 70-year-old at the hospital near Tokyo last week, the Guardian reported. The man has terminal cancer and wants to die under his real name, Satoshi Kirishima, instead of his alias. He also revealed previously unknown details about the bombings, police said. "We believe that the man was really the suspect," said the head of the national police agency Yasuhiro Tsuyuki. Four days after the interview, the man died without the police being able to officially confirm his identity.
Bombings targeting Japan's elite
Born in 1954, Kirishima joined the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front as a student. A bomb attack on a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries building in 1975 killed eight people and injured more than 160. The group was blamed for the attack.
Kirishima was suspected of being involved in a series of bombings. He was wanted in 1975 for detonating a bomb in a building in Tokyo's posh Ginza district, in which no one was injured.
Kirishima was said to be the only one of the ten members who was never caught. Two members of the group were sentenced to death, including its founder Masashi Daidoji, who was executed in 2017. A total of eight members were charged - two of whom were released in 1977 through a deal by the "Japanese Red Army". To do this, they hijacked a Japan Airlines plane in Bangladesh.
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