Tokyo Metropolitan Police showed the public roughly 700 tools and devices Thursday that they believe were used by a leftist extremist to eavesdrop on telephone conversations.

According to police, the equipment was confiscated from the car of Motohiro Agata, 47, a member of the Kakumaru faction of revolutionary Marxists who was arrested July 10 on suspicion of falsifying residency papers to make it appear as if he had moved to Neyagawa, Osaka Prefecture, in April 1996.

Among the items found in the car were a helmet and hand-signal flags often used by construction workers at project sites.

Officials at the Public Security Bureau of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department searched the car as part of investigations related to the theft of prosecutors' records in the trial of Jun Hase, a 14-year-old held on suspicion of killing two children.

Police have said they suspect the leftist group in the theft, which took place at the office of a psychiatrist who was called in to assist in the case.

Agata, who was apprehended in Tokyo by police officers during a traffic violation, is believed to have on several occasions tampered with telephone lines while pretending to do construction work, sources close to the investigation said. The confiscated items included wrenches, connecting wires and apparatus for checking electric circuitry.