Former Japan Red Army commando sentenced to life in prison

A former member of the Japanese Red Army was sentenced to life in prison Friday for his role in the far-left guerrillas' attack on the French embassy in The Hague and the hijacking of a plane.
The Tokyo District Court handed Jun Nishikawa, 56, the sentence after he was found guilty of involvement in the 1974 embassy attack and hijacking of a Japan Airlines plane three years later. "Terrorist attacks cannot be condoned as they deny democracy and the rule of law," presiding judge Tsutomu Aoyagi said during sentencing. Three Red Army members stormed the French embassy in the Netherlands in September 1974, taking the ambassador and 10 other staff hostage to secure the release of militants in a French prison. Two police officers were shot and seriously wounded in the attack.
During the 1977 hijacking, which Judge Aoyagi described as cruel, Nishikawa and four other commandos held passengers and crew hostage for seven days. Armed with guns and hand grenades, they hijacked the JAL jet, en route from Paris to Tokyo, over the Indian Ocean.
They forced the plane to land at Dhaka airport in Bangladesh and took six million dollars in ransom in exchange for the passengers and crew, Friday's ruling on the sentencing said. They also won the release of three Red Army and other extreme left-wing activists from Japanese prisons. They then flew to Algeria and went into hiding.
Nishikawa was initially put on trial in 1975 on charges of attempted murder over the seizure of the French embassy. But the trial was suspended that same year for 23 years after he was released from detention when the Red Army seized the US embassy in Kuala Lumpur. The Red Army released their embassy hostages in exchange for Nishikawa and other jailed members walking free.
Nishikawa went on to commit the hijacking, and was finally captured in Bolivia in 1997 with his trial resuming in mid-1998. The Red Army, founded after the radical leftist movement at home dwindled due to police crackdowns and factional infighting, advocated world revolution through armed violence.
It earned world-wide notoriety in 1972 when its commandos sprayed Israel's Lod International Airport in Tel Aviv with gunfire, killing 24 people and wounding 76 others.
The attack earned the Red Army a place of honour in the Palestinian guerrilla movement and was followed by a series of hijackings and attacks on embassies. The Red Army has in recent years wooed activists at home concerned about protecting the country's pacifist constitution or the environment.
Its female leader, Fusako Shigenobu, was arrested in Osaka in western Japan in 2000 after slipping into Japan under a false identity. She announced the disbandment of the group in April 2001.
Now 61, Shigenobu was sentenced by the Tokyo District Court to 20 years in prison last year for her involvement in the seizure of the French embassy in The Hague as well as two counts of violating the passport law. She has appealed the decision to the Tokyo High Court.