Kozo Okamoto, a member of the Japanese Red Army who participated in the 1972 Lod Airport massacre in Israel, has died in Beirut. His death was announced by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which said he died in the Dahiya district of the Lebanese capital.
Okamoto was the sole surviving attacker from the terrorist cell that carried out the massacre on May 30, 1972, at Lod Airport, now known as Ben Gurion International Airport. The attack, carried out in cooperation with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, left 26 people dead and dozens wounded.
The attackers arrived at the airport posing as passengers before retrieving weapons from their luggage and opening fire in the terminal. Among those killed were 17 Christian pilgrims from Puerto Rico, eight Israelis, and a Canadian citizen. One of the Israeli victims was Professor Aharon Katzir, a leading scientist and brother of future Israeli President Ephraim Katzir.
Two of the attackers were killed during the assault, while Okamoto was wounded and captured by Israeli security forces. He was later tried by an Israeli military court and sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the attack.
In 1985, Okamoto was released from Israeli prison as part of the Jibril prisoner exchange deal, in which Israel freed 1,150 security prisoners in exchange for three Israeli soldiers captured during the First Lebanon War.
After his release, Okamoto traveled to several Middle Eastern countries and eventually settled in Lebanon. In 1997, he was arrested there along with other members of the Japanese Red Army for offenses related to documents and visas. While his colleagues were later deported to Japan, Lebanon granted Okamoto political asylum and he remained in the country, even though Japan continued to request his extradition.
Over the years, Okamoto lived far from the limelight, but his name returned to the headlines in May 2022, on the 50th anniversary of the massacre, where he made a rare public appearance in Beirut to commemorate the attack, already old and fragile. During the event, he laid a wreath at the memorial for his friends and posed for a photo with Popular Front supporters.
His death in Beirut marks the end of the story of a man who, for more than half a century, was one of the names associated with one of the most severe and memorable terrorist attacks in the history of Israeli aviation. The Lod Airport massacre remains one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Israel’s history and had a lasting impact on international airport security measures.