The founder of the Japanese Red Army, Fusaku Shigenobu (76), was released from her prison in Japan after serving 21.5 years in prison.

It is noteworthy that a Japanese court in Tokyo sentenced Shigenoba to prison, finding her guilty of organizing a hostage-taking at the French embassy in The Hague in 1974.

The “Japanese Red Army” is a left-wing organization that emerged from the anti-Vietnam War movement and put forward the slogan of the destruction of capitalism, and in the seventies it was reorganized to protect the Arab cause and support the Palestinian cause in its struggle against Israel, when Fusaku Shigenobu moved to Lebanon, to live there.

In Beirut, she met PPF speaker and Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani, worked with him in the Central Media Department, joined the PPF to participate in the production of films and media materials for the Front, and also translated into Japanese the language of many provisions and political documents of the Front.

When she returned to Japan in November 2000, she was arrested and investigated until she was convicted in 2005 of storming the French embassy in the Netherlands in 1974.

According to the French Press Agency (AFP), Shigenobu is believed to be behind the planning of the 1972 Lod Airport operation in Tel Aviv, which killed 26 people and injured about 80.

For its part, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine congratulated “Japanese fighter Fusako Shigenobu on her release from Japanese prisons today”, emphasizing that “the Palestinian people will not forget what this fighter and her comrades in the Red Army have done for Palestine and affairs”. The Popular Front called on the “free people of the world” to “follow the example of this Japanese revolutionary fighter, who made his principled ideological and revolutionary affiliation a reality by fulfilling his transgeographical international duty in the struggle together with Palestine.” and the Popular Front.