MADRID, 28 May. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Japanese authorities have released this Saturday after 20 years in prison the founder of the Red Army of Japan, Fusako Shigenobu, leader of what was considered at the time the most prominent terrorist organization in the country, responsible in 1972 for the massacre of the old Israeli airport in Lod (now Ben Gurion) which resulted in the death of 26 people.
Shigenobu, 76, was jailed primarily for being convicted of organizing the takeover of the French Embassy in The Hague, the Netherlands, in 1974. The terrorists used 10 hostages, including the ambassador, to negotiate the release of a comrade. After achieving their objective, they managed to escape to Aden (Yemen), at the beginning of a wave of attacks, many of which had the collaboration of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
The founder of the terrorist organization, now ill with cancer, left Japan in 1971, the same year she would go on to create the group from Lebanon, and evaded capture until she was arrested in Osaka prefecture in 2000. A year later, and already behind bars, she herself would announce the dissolution of the organization.
Shigenobu has taken advantage of his first statements to apologize for his actions. “I apologize for causing harm to people I did not know. Now, I would like to focus on my therapy and learning first,” he said in comments collected by the official Kiodo news agency.
While acknowledging “mistakes” in her leadership, she also declared herself “grateful” to have lived “according to a desire to change the world for the better.”
Shigenobu’s daughter, Mei, has assured the same Japanese agency that her mother is no longer interested in violence, but wants to communicate with the world through social networks and will continue writing about “the plight of Palestinians under the Israeli occupation”.