OSAKA -- A man in the city of Ashiya, Hyogo Prefecture, was arrested Thursday on suspicion of harboring Fusako Shigenobu, founder of the Japanese Red Army terrorist group, investigative sources said.
The sources identified the suspect as former company executive Kiyotaka Mori, 55.
He is the fifth person to be arrested for assisting Shigenobu while she was in hiding in Japan.
Shigenobu, who founded the one-time powerful terrorist group in 1971, was arrested last November in Osaka Prefecture and has since been charged with masterminding the 1974 seizure of the French Embassy at the Hague, as well as other charges.
According to the sources, Mori is a key member of a Japanese Red Army support group based in the Kansai region. Police believe the group helped provide the money to support Shigenobu while she was in hiding, they added.
Mori, for his part, is suspected of securing transport for Shigenobu when she was moving about in Hyogo Prefecture, they said.
He had been working as an executive at a firm run by relatives up until about two years ago, according to the sources.
Japanese Red Army members were wanted in connection with other terrorist incidents mainly in the 1970s, including the massacre at Israel's Lod airport and the 1977 hijacking of a Japan Airlines jet over India in which they received $6 million in ransom from the Japanese government, police said.
Police have so far arrested two people on suspicion of providing Shigenobu with a hideout in Osaka's Nishinari Ward and two others for allegedly reserving a room in a hotel in the city of Takatsuki in the prefecture.