Fusako Shigenobu, founder of the Arj, the Japanese Red Army, a movement that sowed terror in the 1970-1980s in the name of the Palestinian cause, was released after 20 years in prison in Japan. Nicknamed the “red queen” or “the empress of terror”, the woman is 76 years old: she was arrested in 2000 in her country where she returned clandestinely after living thirty years in the Middle East. From her cell, the detainee had proclaimed the dissolution of the movement in 2011.
Shigenobu was released from prison this morning in Tokyo: her daughter was waiting for her with a car and about thirty of her supporters holding a banner reading “We love Fusako”, as well as a hundred journalists. “All this dates back to half a century ago, but our struggle, with the kidnappings, has made the innocent suffer,” said Shigenobu, apologizing. In 2006 the member of the far left who advocated the world revolution through armed struggle was sentenced to twenty years in prison for having organized the kidnapping, during a hundred hours, of some hostages at the French embassy in the Netherlands. in 1974. The former terrorist had not participated directly in the action, which had caused numerous injuries among the police forces and forced France to free a member of the ARJ.
The movement was close to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), of which Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, known as Carlos, had become an armed wing in Europe. Shigenobu is also suspected of having planned the massacre at Lod-Tel Aviv airport, in Israel, carried out by an ARJ commando in 1972, a suicide action with machine guns and grenades that had caused 26 deaths and almost 30 injuries. among civilians. Born in Tokyo in 1945, Fusako Shigenobu had become a far-left militant quite by accident in 1965, when she was invited to a sit-in in the midst of Japan’s student rebellion against the Vietnam War and the Japanese security treaty. -American. Shigenobu then rapidly radicalized.