Former Japanese Red Army member Tsutomu Shirosaki died while serving his sentence for his involvement in the 1986 terrorist attack on the Japanese Embassy in Jakarta, informed sources said Sunday. He was 76.
Shirosaki choked on his dinner and died at Fuchu Prison in western Tokyo on Saturday, according to the sources.
In 1977, Shirosaki, then imprisoned on different charges, was freed extralegally after the Japanese Red Army demanded the release of its jailed activists during the so-called Dhaka incident, in which the militant communist group hijacked a Japan Airlines plane and forced it to land in the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka.
Shirosaki was detained in Nepal in 1996 over the Jakarta attack, and after serving time in the United States, he was transferred to Japan in 2015, where he was arrested.
In November 2016, Tokyo District Court sentenced Shirosaki to 12 years in prison for attempted murder and other charges, and Tokyo High Court upheld the decision in September 2018.
According to the ruling, Shirosaki, in conspiracy with others, fired two mortar shells at the Japanese Embassy in Jakarta from a hotel in the Indonesian capital on May 14, 1986. Both shells failed to detonate, and no one was injured.