Word: okamoto
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...three young Japanese "Red Army" terrorists who shot up Tel Aviv's Lod International Airport two months ago died in the grim massacre that claimed 26 other lives. Ever since, Survivor Kozo Okamoto, 24, has pleaded for the opportunity to join his comrades, either through suicide or a death sentence from the Israeli military court trying him on charges growing out of the bloodbath. Okamoto insisted to the court's three lieutenant colonels that the dead become stars, and that he himself hoped to enter the constellation Orion...
Whether because of youth or ignorance, Kozo Okamoto, 24, seemed not to comprehend last week the sober déja vu of his appearance before a military tribunal in a barracks near Tel Aviv. Okamoto stood before the three-officer court accused in the killing of 26 people and the wounding of 72 others in a terrorist attack at Tel Aviv's Lod International Airport in which his two accomplices were also killed (TIME, June 12). The circumstances, however -a stern tribunal, spartan courtroom, TV lights, well-frisked audience of international journalists-replayed the surroundings in which Adolf Eichmann...
...conclusion of his nine-month trial, Eichmann was hanged. It is the only time in Israeli history that the death penalty has been carried out. Okamoto, after almost certainly being found guilty this week, faces the same fate, barring a commutation of his sentence by the Israeli Chief of Staff, General David Elazar, or clemency from President Zalman Shazar. Unlike Eichmann, who to the very end denied personal responsibility for the genocide of European Jews, the effusive, lantern-jawed Okamoto positively gloried in his actions. "Revolutionary warfare is a war of justice," he told the court in an excitable singsong...
...facts of the charges against Okamoto-firing guns and illegally tossing grenades with intent to kill people and to damage property, and working for an illegal organization-were never in doubt. After his arrest at Lod seven weeks ago, Okamoto was confined for a period in Ramie prison, where Eichmann had also been held. Okamoto, who was manacled while sleeping to prevent self-strangulation, spent much of his time while awaiting trial composing his confession. "I did discharge arms with two other people whose names I have forgotten," he told the court. "I do not know how many people...
...Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He was also editor of the organization's Beirut weekly, Al Hadaf (The Aim). It was Kanafani's office which in May dispassionately bragged of the P.F.L.P.'s role in the Lod Airport massacre for which Japanese Terrorist Kozo Okamoto was on trial (see preceding story). Kanafani's funeral last week produced the largest display of fedayeen strength and support seen in Beirut for at least two years...