Kozo Okamoto (center) before an Israeli military court in 1972 (French)

Kozo Okamoto - nicknamed Ahmed the Japanese - is a fighter who fought for the Palestinian cause. He carried out the most famous operation that drew the world's attention to the region, and the resistance inspired the idea of ​​martyrdom operations against Israel. He became the only political refugee in a country that does not implement a political asylum policy.

Birth and upbringing

Kozo Okamoto was born on December 7, 1947 in the city of Kumamoto in southern Japan.

He is from a middle-class family, and has 6 brothers and sisters, of whom he is the youngest.

He studied botany and learned English, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, and Russian. He distinguished himself among his peers with his linguistic intelligence and his ability to learn a number of languages ​​in a short time.

Kozo Okamoto surrounded by Israeli soldiers during one of his trial sessions in 1972 (Getty)

Political activity

In his early youth, in 1966, Okamoto joined the Japanese Red Army and began participating in its operations. This organization had a branch concerned with the Palestinian issue, and began communicating through its leader Fusaku Shigenobu with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine through Wadih Haddad and Ghassan Kanafani. Then its leadership and some of its members were forced to leave Japan and reside. In Lebanon in February 1971.

Lod Airport operation

On May 30, 1972, 3 Japanese left the Italian city of Rome on board French Airlines, heading to Tel Aviv, specifically Lod (Ben Gurion) Airport.

The three of them decided to carry out an operation in the name of the Red Army, in cooperation with the Popular Front, with the aim of taking revenge for the destruction of the Middle East aircraft fleet at Beirut Airport in 1968, as well as for the desire to assassinate the biological weapons scientist, Israeli Professor Aaron Katzir.

After the plane landed, Yasuyuki Yasuda, Okudira Tsuyoshi, and Kozo Okamoto went to the baggage claim area, began taking out machine guns and hand grenades, and began shooting at the passengers, killing 26 people and wounding more than 71, most of whom were Christians with American citizenship from the island of Puerto Rico.

At the heart of the operation, Yasuda was killed and Tsuyoshi committed suicide with a grenade he was carrying. While Okamoto tried to escape, he was arrested due to his wounds. Because of this operation and what followed, airlines tightened procedures for searching passenger bags.

Court and prison

Okamoto was arrested and put on trial, in accordance with the Emergency Regulations Act issued by the British Mandate authorities in 1945.

During his interrogation, the Israeli investigation officers promised him that they would give him a gun to end his life if he cooperated with them during his interrogation. He agreed because his culture of struggle and the culture of his organization preferred death to imprisonment, but the Israelis did not give him what they promised him, and he remained in prison.

The court appointed for him lawyer Christman Max, who was known for his defense of Israeli defendants under the emergency law.

He was tortured while awaiting his trial, and he wished to receive the death sentence, which was only issued once in Israel against the Nazi Adolf Eichmann, and on July 23, 1973, he was sentenced to three life imprisonment.

In the courtroom, Okamoto declared: “As a soldier in the Japanese Red Army, I am fighting for the world revolution, and if I die, I will turn into a star in the sky.”

After the world's attention was directed to the operation, the Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani came out as the official spokesman for the Popular Front, and announced that the Front had adopted the operation in cooperation with the Japanese Red Army. The Israeli Foreign Intelligence Agency (Mossad) responded by assassinating him in July 1972.

Okamoto spent most of his 13 years in solitary confinement, exhausting his mental and physical strength. After his release, he narrated that the Israelis were forcing him to eat food with his mouth while his hands were tied behind him like dogs.

Kozo Okamoto in a rare appearance on May 30, 2022 at a Palestinian resistance event in Lebanon (French)

Release him

Both the Red Army and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine tried to put pressure on the Israelis. A Japanese plane was hijacked in the Netherlands in July 1973 and taken to Libya. The kidnappers demanded the release of Okamoto in exchange for the release of the hostages who were on board the plane. After the Israeli side rejected the deal, They released the crew and passengers and blew up the plane.

On May 20, 1985, the Popular Front (General Command) and Israel concluded an agreement to exchange prisoners (Operation “Galilee”). The agreement included Okamoto and a large number of Arab and Palestinian prisoners.

Okamoto went to Libya and was received with overwhelming joy. From Libya, he went to Syria and then to Lebanon with a forged card in the name of Daisuke Namba, named after the man who attempted to assassinate Japanese Emperor Hirohito when he was crown prince.

The "Japanese resistance fighter" resided in the Bekaa in eastern Lebanon, and during his stay he married the daughter of Fusaku Shigenobu, founder of the Red Army.

Kozo Okamoto has been living as a refugee in Lebanon since his release in 1985 (French)

Political asylum

On February 15, 1997, while Okamoto was staying at the home of the Lebanese activist Umayyah Abboud, the authorities arrested him and a number of his companions on charges of entering the country surreptitiously and forging documents, even though Okamoto was keen - during the ten years preceding that date - to renew his residency period in a timely manner. legal.

On July 31, 1997, Lebanese Judge Suhail Abd Sams issued a 3-year prison sentence against Okamoto and his companions.

The group was released in 2000 after the end of their term, and the Japanese government renewed its demand from the Lebanese authorities to hand them over. The Lebanese street rose up in support of them, because they were supporters of the Palestinian cause, and because they stood against Israel, which occupies the lands of Lebanon.

Hundreds gathered in front of the Lebanese Ministry of Interior building, and a number of Arab and Lebanese human rights activists gathered to defend the rights of Japanese detainees and prevent their extradition to their country. The Lebanese media called the Lebanese-Japanese agreement a “deal of shame.”

Kozo Okamoto carried out the Lod Airport operation with his Japanese comrades (Getty)

The pressures of the Palestinian factions and Lebanese parties increased, coinciding with the uprising of the Lebanese street and Arab jurists, so that Kozo Okamoto was released in 2000, and he was granted political asylum in a country that does not recognize this right, and he was stipulated not to engage in any political activity and not to appear on the media, and his place of residence remained unknown. He is known and lives with his wife, Mai Shigenobu, and their two children.

As for his four companions, they left in March 2000 from Lebanon to Jordan, then to Japan in the company of Japanese diplomats. Immediately upon their arrival at Narita-Tokyo Airport in Japan, they were arrested and detained, then released 20 years later, according to Popular Front sources.

Okamoto is still wanted by the Japanese government, as in 2020 it submitted an official request to the Lebanese authorities to extradite him despite him being 73 years old.

Source: Al Jazeera + websites