Lod Airport massacre
| Lod Airport massacre | |
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  The attack site
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| Location | Lod Airport, Tel Aviv , Israel |
| Coordinates | 31°59′42.4″N 34°53′38.65″E / 31.995111°N 34.8940694°E |
| Date | May 30, 1972 12:04 – 12:28 |
| Attack type | Shooting spree |
| Deaths | 26 (+ 2 attackers) |
| Injured (non-fatal) | 79 (+ 1 attacker) |
| Perpetrators | Three members of the Japanese Red Army, on behalf of the PFLP |
The Lod Airport massacre[1][2][3][4] was an incident largely deemed to be a terrorist attack that occurred on May 30, 1972, in which three members of the Japanese Red Army recruited by the Palestinian group called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP),[5][6] attacked Tel Aviv's Lod airport (now Ben Gurion International Airport), which killed 26 people and injured 80 others.[7] Whether or not the attackers were responsible for killing all of the victims has been disputed. [8] Two of the attackers were killed, while Kōzō Okamoto was captured after being wounded.
The dead comprised seventeen Christian pilgrims from Puerto Rico, a Canadian citizen, and eight Israelis, including Professor Aharon Katzir, an internationally renowned protein biophysicist, whose brother, Ephraim Katzir, was elected President of Israel the following year.
Because airport security was focused on the possibility of a Palestinian attack, the use of Japanese attackers took the guards by surprise. The attack has often been described as a suicide mission, but it has also been asserted that it was the outcome of a larger operation (the particulars of which remain unpublicized) that went awry. The three perpetrators—Okamoto, Tsuyoshi Okudaira, and Yasuyuki Yasuda—had been trained in Baalbek, Lebanon; the actual planning was handled by Wadie Haddad (a.k.a. Abu Hani), head of PFLP External, with some input from Okamoto.[8]
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The attack [edit]
The men arrived at the airport aboard an Air France flight from Rome.[9] Dressed conservatively and carrying slim violin cases, they attracted little attention. As they entered the waiting area, they opened up their violin cases and extracted Czech Vz 58 assault rifles with the butt stocks removed. Immediately afterwards, they began to fire indiscriminately at airport staff and visitors, tossing grenades as they changed magazines. Yasuda was shot dead, and Okudaira moved from the airport building into the landing area, firing at passengers disembarking from an El Al aircraft before killing himself with a grenade. Okamoto was shot by security personnel and arrested as he attempted to leave the terminal.[10]
Fatalities [edit]
26 people in total were killed during this incident.
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Aftermath [edit]
The Japanese public initially reacted with disbelief to initial reports that the perpetrators of the massacre were Japanese until a Japanese embassy official sent to the hospital confirmed that Okamoto was a Japanese national. Okamoto told the diplomat that he had nothing personal against the Israeli people, but that he had to do what he did because, "It was my duty as a soldier of the revolution." Okamoto was tried by an Israeli military tribunal and sentenced to life imprisonment in June 1972. During his trial, he actively undermined his own defense, and in particular protested his lawyer's requests for a psychiatric evaluation, but managed to avoid the death penalty by pleading guilty.[10]
Wadie Haddad, the primary organizer of the attack, was assassinated by Mossad in early 1978.[11][12]
Okamoto served only 13 years of his prison sentence. He was released in 1985 with over a thousand other prisoners in an exchange for captured Israeli soldiers.[13] He settled in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. He was arrested in 1997, but in 2000 was granted political refugee status in Lebanon. Four other JRA members arrested at the same time were extradited to Japan.[14]
In June 2006, a legislative initiative by Puerto Rico Senator José Garriga Picó, Senate Project (PS) 1535, was approved by unanimous vote of both houses of the Legislative Assembly of Puerto Rico, making every May 30 "Lod Massacre Remembrance Day". On August 2, 2006, the Governor of Puerto Rico, Aníbal Acevedo Vilá, signed it into law as Law 144.[15] The purpose of "Lod Remembrance Day" is to commemorate those events, to honor both those murdered and those who survived, and to educate the Puerto Rican public against terrorism. On May 30, 2007, the event was officially memorialized in Puerto Rico after 35 years.
North Korea trial [edit]
In 2008, the eight surviving children of Carmelo Calderón Molina, who was killed in the attack, and Pablo Tirado, son of survivor Pablo Tirado Ayala, who was wounded in the attack, filed a lawsuit at the U.S. Federal Courthouse in San Juan, Puerto Rico. They sued the government of North Korea for providing material support to the PFLP and the JRA, and for planning the attack. The plaintiffs claimed a right to sue the North Korean government based on the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976. Preliminary hearings to examine evidence began on December 2, 2009, with district judge Francisco Besosa presiding. The North Korean government did not respond to the lawsuit and had no representatives present. The victim's families were represented by attorneys from the Shurat HaDin Israel Law Center, including its founder, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner.[16]
In July 2010, the U.S. court ordered North Korea to pay US$378 million to families as compensation for the terror attack.[17]
See also [edit]
References [edit]
- ^ "The short-term impact of the Lod Airport massacre as a precursor to Munich..." Stephen Sloan, John C. Bersia, J. B. Hill. Terrorism: The Present Threat in Context, Berg Publisher, 2006, p. 50. ISBN 1-84520-344-5
- ^ "Two years later, just before the Lod Airport massacre, authorities uncovered the bodies of 14 young men and women on remote Mount Haruna, 70 miles northwest of Tokyo." "Again the Red Army", TIME, August 18, 1975.
- ^ "Those named by Lebanese officials as having been arrested included at least three Red Army members who have been wanted for years by Japanese authorities, most notably Kōzō Okamoto, 49, the only member of the attacking group who survived the Lod Airport massacre." "Lebanon Seizes Japanese Radicals Sought in Terror Attacks", The New York Times, February 19, 1997.
- ^ "They were responsible for the Lod Airport massacre in Israel in 1972, which was committed on behalf of the PFLP." Jeffrey D. Simon, The Terrorist Trap: America's Experience with Terrorism, Indiana University Press, p. 324. ISBN 0-253-21477-7
- ^ "This Week in History:". July 24, 2012. Retrieved 2012-07-24. "The assailants, members of communist group the Japanese Red Army (JRA), were enlisted by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)," Unknown parameter
|description=ignored (help) - ^ "They were responsible for the Lod Airport massacre in Israel in 1972, which was committed on behalf of the PFLP." Jeffrey D. Simon, The Terrorist Trap: America's Experience with Terrorism, Indiana University Press, p. 324. ISBN 0-253-21477-7
- ^ "In what became known as the Lod Airport Massacre, three members of the terrorist group, Japanese Red Army, arrived at the airport aboard Air France Flight 132 from Rome. Once inside the airport they grabbed automatic firearms from their carry-on cases and fired at airport staff and visitors. In the end, 26 people died and 80 people were injured." CBC News, The Fifth Estate, "Fasten Your Seatbelts: Ben Gurion Airport in Israel", 2007. Retrieved June 2, 2008.
- ^ a b Marx, W David. "Interview: Dr. Patricia Steinhoff 4". Neojaponisme. Retrieved February 20, 2013.
- ^ Burns, John F. (March 17, 2000). "Fate of 5 Terrorists Hangs Between Japan and Lebanon". The New York Times.
- ^ a b Schreiber, Mark (1996). Shocking Crimes of Postwar Japan. Tuttle Publishing. ISBN 4-900737-34-8.
- ^ "Israel used chocs to poison Palestinian"
- ^ http://www.swr.de/presseservice/archiv/2010/-/id=5749182/nid=5749182/did=6605332/1e8ty7a/index.html dead link
- ^ The Terrorist Attack on Lod Airport: 40 Years After
- ^ "Red Army guerrillas arrested". BBC Online. March 18, 2000. Retrieved 2012-05-30.
- ^ Law 144 August 2, 2006 M
- ^ Marrero, Rosita (December 3, 2009). "Juicio civil contra Corea del Norte por boricuas muertos en atentado de 1972" (in es). Primera Hora. Retrieved 2012-05-30.
- ^ US court fines N. Korea over 1972 Israel terror attack, YNet 07.21.10
External links [edit]
- 1972: Japanese kill 26 at Tel Aviv airport (BBC news, On This Day, May 29, 1972).
- Complaint and court documents from survivors' lawsuit against North Korea for supporting the JRA and PFLP
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