wow, spooky, that sounds very familiar … "Max Kritzman, the defense attorney, who during the period of the British Mandate defended many members of the Irgun underground organization, had a hard time coping with his client’s approach. In an effort to assist Okamoto, despite the latter’s objections to the move, Kritzman turned to a psychiatrist, who pronounced Okamoto sane. Toward the end of the trial, Kritzman discovered that his client’s age did not appear on the charge sheet; taking advantage of the uncertainty, he then noted that the death penalty was prohibited for people under the age of 18. Okamoto, however, immediately cleared things up by standing and stating his actual age."

@israel @palestine cc @kmpiw @kmpiw

#Irgun #MeirFeinsteinWas17 #MaxKritzman #KozoOkamoto #JapaneseRedArmy #MeirFeinstein #IsraelTerroristState #Israel #Palestine

It is with a sad heart that we report the passing of Tsutomu Shirosaki. Tsutomu, a political prisoner and an alleged former militant in the Japanese Red Army, died Saturday while in a Japanese prison. Tsutomu died after choking during a meal. He was deeply loved and respected by members of the Los Angeles Anarchist Black Cross.

Tsutomu Shirosaki was born on December 5, 1947 in Toyama, Japan. In the 1960s, he went to Tokyo University, where he received a degree in engineering. It was during his college years, where Tsutomu began partici- pating in the student movement, embracing a more left-wing philosophy. By the 1970s, Shirosaki participated in various under- ground activities, including a string of bank and post office robberies. These actions were fund-raising activities for Japanese radical groups. But in 1971, Shirosaki was arrested in Tokyo and sentenced to ten years in prison for an attack on a Bank of Yokohama branch office.

Flight 472 Hijack

On September 28, 1977, five members of the Japanese Red Army hijacked Japan Airlines Flight 472 in Dhaka, Bangladesh. They demanded $6 million from the Japanese government and the release of nine prisoners held in Japan. The prisoners listed included radical activist and members of the Japanese Red Army.

On October 2, six of the nine prisoners were released and taken to Dhaka. One of those prisoners released was Tsutomu

Shirosaki. The released prisoners, the JRA hijackers and the remaining hostages then flew to Algeria, where the hostages were released. According to Shirosaki, the released prisoners and JRA members even- tually ended up in Lebanon. After the drama of the hijacked settled, the Japanese author- ities announced that the released prisoners should turn themselves in to the nearest Japanese embassy. With no response from the prisoners, the Japanese government placed the freed prisoners on the Interpol wanted list.

Tsutomu Shirosaki, while choosing free- dom, had no idea where to go. He had never traveled outside of Japan and spoke no other language than his own. The other freed prisoners found themselves in a simi- lar situation. According to Shirosaki, the Japanese Red Army assisted the freed pris- oners in adjusting to the new region. Despite the generosity of the JRA, Shirosaki has stated that he never joined the organization. Instead, he became a volunteer fighter in the Palestinian revolution with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP.) With the Palestinian movement being so strong in Lebanon, Shirosaki did not need a passport to stay in the country.

Tsutomu Shirosaki never took the stand at his own trial. He has stated he had no part in the attacks in Jakarta or membership with the Japanese Red Army or the Anti- Imperialist International Brigade. He has argued that his fingerprint had been placed at the scene. In his own words, “I did not know that planting a copied finger print from a file is easy work, even in the early ’70s a corrupted policeman did, but a few years later it became clear. But I didn’t know such information, as mentioned, I was in Japan’s jail, then in Lebanon, then in South Asia, so no news about such activities.”

Tsutomu Shirosaki was sentenced to two concurrent 20 year terms, two concurrent 10 year terms. The 20 year terms were ordered to run consecutively to the 10 year terms for a total prison time of 30 years in federal prison.

1986 Bombing in Jakarta

On May 14, 1986, two mortar-styled rock- ets were fired into the U.S. Embassy com- pound in Jakarta, Indonesia. Then, two rock- ets were fired from a hotel room toward the Japanese Embassy. Also that morning, a car bomb exploded in the Canadian Embassy parking lot causing injuries to three people. A group calling itself the Anti-Imperialist International Brigade (AIIB) claimed respon- sibility for the action. The attacks were in response to the G7 summit in Tokyo.

Seven weeks after the incident, the Japanese government announced that they

had found a fingerprint of Tsutomu Shirosaki in the hotel room where the rockets were launched at the Japanese embassy. They also claimed the Anti-Imperialist International Brigade was another named for the Japanese Red Army.

During the time of the attack, Tsutomu Shirosaki was still in Lebanon. He was not in Jakarta and was not a member of either the JRA or the AIIB. Shirosaki did not respond to the claims of his involvement because he felt they were so ridiculous. He was in Lebanon and thought that he was in a safe haven.

After the Oslo Accords, it became difficult for the Palestinian armed resistance to exist in Lebanon, so Shirosaki decided to leave. Using a false ID, he traveled to South Asia.

In December of 1987, Italian authorities announced an international warrants for Tsutomu Shirosaki and another suspected AIIB/JRA member, Junzo Okudaira, for an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Rome six months earlier. The attack, claimed by the AIIB, was committed in response to the Economic Summit taking place in Venice, Italy.

The Arrest and Deportation

On September 21, 1996, local police in Kathmandu, Nepal arrested Tsutomu Shirosaki after he tried to contact some friends, whose phone was tapped by the US National Security Agency. He was handed over to the FBI and extradited to the United States to stand trial.

After arriving in the United States, Shirosaki stood before a 15-day trial and was sentenced to two concurrent 20-year terms and also given 10-year terms on other chargers. The 20-year terms were ordered to run consecutively to the 10-year terms for a total prison time of 30 years.

He was released from the U.S. Prison system in 2015 after proving to be a model inmate.The same year, Shirosaki was deported from the United States and arrested on his return to Japan by Tokyo police. In 2018, the Tokyo High Court upheld a lower court ruling that sentenced him to 12 years in prison for conspiring with a person to fire two mortars toward the embassy in the Indonesian capital. He has remained in a Japanese prison until his passing.

source: Anarchist Black Cross Federation

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/07/24/anarchist-black-cross-federation-commemorates-tsutomu-shirosaki-japanese-red-army-prisoner/

#asia #japan #japaneseRedArmy #TsutomuShirosaki

Former Japanese Red Army member Tsutomu Shirosaki died while in state custody his involvement in the 1986 resistance attack on the Japanese Embassy in Jakarta. He was 76.

Shirosaki choked on his dinner and died at Fuchu Prison in western Tokyo on Saturday, according to the state forces

In 1977, Shirosaki, then imprisoned on different charges, was freed extralegally after the Japanese Red Army demanded the release of its jailed activists during the Dhaka incident, in which the militant communist group hijacked a Japan Airlines plane and forced it to land in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka.

Shirosaki was detained in Nepal in 1996 over the Jakarta attack, and after serving time in the United States, he was transferred to Japan in 2015, where he was arrested.

In November 2016, Tokyo District Court sentenced Shirosaki to 12 years in prison for attempted murder and other charges, and Tokyo High Court upheld the decision in September 2018.

According to the ruling, Shirosaki, in conspiracy with others, fired two mortar shells at the Japanese Embassy in Jakarta from a hotel in the Indonesian capital on May 14, 1986. Both shells failed to detonate, and no one was injured.

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/07/23/japanese-red-army-member-tsutomu-shirosaki-dies-in-prison/

#asia #japan #japaneseRedArmy #politicalPrisoner

Deir Yassin was a brutal massacre carried out by zionist death squads in 1948 indelibly etched into the collective consciousness of all Palestinians. The attack was conducted primarily by the Irgun and Lehi, fascist Zionist paramilitary organizations. The massacre was carried out despite the village having agreed to evade conflict. It occurred during the 1947-1948 civil war and was a central component of the Nakba and the 1948 Palestinian expulsion and flight. 107 people were killed in the massacre.

Deir Yassin is why Palestinians resist—to reclaim their stolen village and avenge the blood of the martyrs. Throughout the storied history of Palestinian resistance, heroes vowed revenge in the name of Deir Yassin: resistance fighters killed 77 zionists in an operation four days after the 1948 massacre, the Deir Yassin Unit of Arab resistance fighters carried out an operation that killed 40 settlers under the command of martyr Dalal Al-Mughrabi in 1978, and the Deir Yassin Operation of 1972 was an internationalist feat of anti-imperialist resistance that shook the world.

The Deir Yassin Operation was launched 51 years ago today. Three Japanese comrades—Bassem, Salah, and Ahmed—joined forces with five Palestinian comrades to strike the zionist entity at its heart. Their real names were Tsuyoshi Okudaira, Yasuke Yasuda, and Kozo Okamoto, and they were members of the Japanese Red Army, which received weapons, training, and finances from the PFLP. They had trained in Lebanon, and all were students: Bassem of architecture, Salah of electrical engineering, Ahmed of botany, and all of revolution.

Their location of choice was the so-called “Lod Airport” (now “Ben-Gurion Airport”) in occupied Al-Lydd.  Known as quiet men, they quietly arrived from Paris at 10 PM, waited for their luggage—violin cases loaded with weapons, ammunition, and explosives—and carried out their revolutionary duty. By the time they were done with their operation, 26 zionists were left dead on the ground and 80 were wounded. Five Palestinian comrades fired outside the airport in support. Bassem was martyred after he ran out of ammunition, Salah blew himself up in a revolutionary act, and Ahmed (Kozo) went on to become a revolutionary icon after spending 13 years in solitary confinement in the zionist prisons.

In interrogation, Kozo declared that the operation was part of the global revolution against zionism and imperialism. He and the masterful tactician Dr. Wadie Haddad had planned it. In a recorded video, PFLP founder Bassam Abu Sharif claims the operation on behalf of the PFLP, stating that it is a continuation of the PFLP’s line of “attacking the enemy wherever it hurts most” in reference to Wadie Haddad’s slogan “behind the enemy in every place.” After brutal psychological and physical torture, Kozo was freed in 1985 in the Ahmed Jibril prisoner exchange, and he went on to live his life in asylum in Lebanon after a troublesome period. Kozo was interviewed years later; he stated that he had hoped to be martyred during the operation, and when asked if he regretted anything: “I had no choice but to open fire in the name of armed struggle.”

Five weeks after the operation, the Mossad assassinated PFLP leader Ghassan Kanafani and his 17-year-old niece Lamees in Beirut in retribution for the Deir Yassin Operation.

Glory to the glorymakers, the internationalist revolutionaries who upheld the promise of resistance and global revolution. The echoes of Deir Yassin’s pain are reflected in the bullets of the comrades, the internationalist fighters united against imperialism who pledged to keep the memories of the martyrs and usurped villages alive.

The struggle for Palestinian liberation and the fight against zionism everywhere transcends borders. With every stone thrown, every bullet fired, and every zionist weapons company dismantled, the resistance honors the  martyrs and struggle with every act of defiance until the lands are liberated of zionism and freed, from the river to the sea. We will never forget Deir Yassin, and we will never forget the bravery of those who committed themselves to liberation by any means necessary.

Remember Deir Yassin. Remember our heroes. For this—our joint struggle—is the legacy of Deir Yassin and our inheritance.

https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/05/30/deir-yassin-a-zionist-massacre-a-resistance-unit-and-an-operation/

#deirYassin #gaza #japaneseRedArmy #palestine #pflp #redArmy #resistance #westAsia