Kozo Okamoto, 1972 Israel airport attacker, dies

By AFP 23 July 2026, 7:04 pm

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Kozo Okamoto (C) -- the only surviving member of the three-man “Japanese Red Army” (JRA) unit that killed 26 people in an attack on Israel’s Lod airport on May 30, 1972 -- attends a ceremony organized by members and supporters of the PFLP Palestinian terror group that planned the attack, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Lod terror attack in Lebanon’s capital Beirut on May 30, 2022. (JOSEPH EID/AFP)

Kozo Okamoto, who carried out a deadly terror attack on an Israeli airport on behalf of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, has died in Beirut aged 78, the group says.

In a statement, the PFLP mourns “militant comrade Kozo Okamoto… who passed away today” in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a stronghold of Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group.

He was part of a three-man terrorist squad from the Japanese Red Army that killed 26 people on May 30, 1972, at Lod airport — now known as Ben Gurion — near Tel Aviv in an attack planned by the PFLP.

The other two attackers died, but Okamoto was wounded and captured, and eventually sentenced to life in prison in Israel.

He was released in a 1985 prisoner exchange and had long lived in Lebanon.