Kozo Okamoto, Japanese militant who took part in a 1972 Tel Aviv airport attack, dies in Beirut

What the report says

Yahoo Entertainment, carrying an Associated Press report from Beirut, reported that Kozo Okamoto, a Japanese militant involved in the 1972 attack at Tel Aviv’s international airport, died Thursday in the Lebanese capital. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which had protected him, announced his death and said he had been ill for an extended period. He was 78.

Okamoto was associated with the Japanese Red Army, an ultra-leftist guerrilla organization with ties to Palestinian militants. According to the AP account, he and two other Japanese attackers arrived at the Tel Aviv airport on May 30, 1972, retrieved weapons from their luggage and opened fire with rifles and grenades. The attack killed 26 people and injured dozens. The two other attackers died at the scene, while Okamoto was wounded, later convicted and sentenced to life in prison in Israel.

He served 12 years before being released in 1985 as part of a prisoner exchange between Israel and Palestinian guerrillas. Okamoto later lived in Lebanon, where he received political asylum after being arrested with four other Japanese nationals in 1997. The others were transferred to Japan in 2000, while Lebanon repeatedly rejected Japanese requests to hand him over.

The report places Okamoto’s death within a broader history of international militant activity linked to the Japanese Red Army and the PFLP in the 1970s. In Lebanon and parts of the Arab world, he was regarded by some as a supporter of the Palestinian cause; elsewhere, he remained known for his role in one of the deadliest airport attacks of that era.