Kozo Okamoto (Ahmad the Japanese), pro-Palestinian JRA militant dies Japanese activist Kozo Okamoto has died more than five decades after taking part in the 1972 Lod Airport operation near Tel Aviv, which killed 26 people. Okamoto was one of three Japanese Red Army members in the operation planned with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Okamoto was wounded, captured, and sentenced to life in prison, the other two were killed at the scene. He served 13 years before his release, which came after another PFLP operation and subsequent prisoner exchange with Israel in 1985. The PFLP says he spent much of that time in solitary confinement, systematically tortured, and forced to eat off the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back. He eventually returned to Lebanon, was arrested in 1997, and in 2000 avoided extradition to Japan after weeks of protests by pro-Palestinian groups, becoming the first and only person granted political asylum in Lebanon. Four other JRA members were sent back to Tokyo. He lived out his life under PFLP care in Beirut, largely in seclusion and still wanted by Japan, while remaining a folk hero in the Palestinian refugee camps. At a 50th anniversary commemoration in 2022, PFLP members walked him to a cemetery on the edge of Shatila refugee camp, where he laid a wreath for his fallen comrades and made a V for victory gesture ✌️. A PFLP statement says he died today in Beirut’s southern suburbs (Dahiyeh), aged 78.