Police on Tuesday arrested Kazuo Tohira, one of four Japanese Red Army members held by Japanese authorities since their deportation from Lebanon in March, on suspicion of submitting false documents in order to enter Ecuador in 1994.
Tohira, 47, who was being tried for suspected forgery of official documents prior to leaving Japan in 1975 as part of an exchange for hostages taken at the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, was detained in Tokyo on March 18.
He is suspected of having submitted false documents to Ecuadorean immigration authorities in February 1994.
Tohira was deported to Japan together with Haruo Wako, 51, indicted on charges of attempted murder and taking hostages in the 1974 occupation of the French Embassy in The Hague, and two other Red Army members.
The four were part of a group of five Japanese Red Army fugitives arrested in Lebanon in 1997 and sentenced to three years in prison for using forged passports. Their prison terms expired March 7.
Japan had demanded that Lebanon hand over the four. However, Lebanon, citing the lack of an extradition treaty between the two countries, deported them to Jordan. After being denied entry at an airport in Amman, the four were flown back to Japan.