Kozo Okamoto, Leader of 1972 Ben Gurion Airport Massacre, Dies in Beirut at 78

Kozo Okamoto, a member of the Japanese Red Army and leader of the terrorist cell that carried out the massacre at Ben Gurion Airport on May 30, 1972, has died in Beirut at the age of 78. Okamoto was the only member of the group to survive the attack. He was tried by a military court in Israel and sentenced to three life terms but was released after 13 years as part of the Jibril prisoner exchange deal.

Okamoto joined the Japanese Red Army in February 1970, recruited by his two older brothers, one of whom, Takedia Okamoto, was involved in a Japanese plane hijacking to North Korea. After joining, Kozo severed ties with his family and stopped his studies. In September 1971, he traveled to Lebanon for military training, where he connected with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) led by George Habash.

Weeks before the attack, Okamoto and his comrades conducted reconnaissance flights on El Al routes between Europe and the US to study Israeli security measures. Okamoto’s suspicious purchase of a first-class ticket on a Montreal-Paris flight raised Israeli security concerns. After arriving in Paris, he went to Beirut and joined two other Japanese students, forming a terror cell that trained in the PFLP camp in Baalbek under the alias "Ahmed."

On May 16, 1972, the group was ordered to attack Lod Airport (now Ben Gurion Airport). On May 22, Okamoto and Takashi Okudaira flew from Beirut to Frankfurt with forged documents, and on May 24, Yasuda Yasuko joined them. The three stayed in Rome until May 30, then boarded Air France Flight 132 from Paris to Tel Aviv. Upon landing around 10 p.m., they discarded their passports and opened fire with Kalashnikov rifles and grenades in the arrivals hall.

The attack killed 24 people and wounded 78, including Professor Aharon Katzir, a leading Israeli scientist and brother of future President Ephraim Katzir. Okamoto was severely wounded but captured by El Al employee Hanan Zaiton with Border Police assistance after attempting to flee.

Okamoto’s death in Beirut marks the end of a significant chapter in the history of international terrorism linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and global militant networks of the 1970s.