Japan to arrest former Red Army member deported by US
Police in Japan are set to apprehend a former member of a militant group upon his arrival in Tokyo after serving a prison term in the United States.
Tsutomu Shirosaki, an ex-member of the communist Red Army militant group, was deported from the United States after serving a 30-year prison term last month. He is expected to arrive in Tokyo’s Narita airport late Friday.
Shirosaki was freed on January 16, and was later transferred to a facility run by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In 1971, Shirosaki was initially arrested in Japan for attempted bank robbery and received a 10-year jail term.
However, he along with other Red Army members was released in 1977 in exchange for the hostages they had taken in the hijacking of a Japan Airlines plane in Dhaka, Bangladesh. He later fled Japan.
He was later arrested in his hiding place in Nepal in 1996 and handed over to the US, where he was jailed for attempted murder and other crimes related to a mortar attack on the US embassy in the Indonesian capital Jakarta on May 14, 1986.
The 67-year-old will now be rearrested in Japan on charges of carrying out an attack on Japan’s embassy in Jakarta on the same day as well as attempting to set fire to a hotel room in 1986 in the Indonesian capital.
Police believe that the attack was aimed at destroying evidence related to mortar attacks launched on the US and Japanese embassies.
The Japanese Red Army was founded by Fusako Shigenobu early in 1971 with the aim of overthrowing the Japanese government and the monarchy. The group formally disbanded in 2001.
HJM/MKA/HMV
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