was a Japanese

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

militant, member of the

Japanese Red Army The was a militant communist organization active from 1971 to 2001. It was designated a terrorist organization by Japan and the United States. The JRA was founded by Fusako Shigenobu and Tsuyoshi Okudaira in February 1971, and was most acti ...

(JRA). Wakō attended

Keio University , abbreviated as or , is a private university, private research university located in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. It was originally established as a school for Rangaku, Western studies in 1858 in Edo. It was granted university status in 1920, becomi ...

, but dropped out in 1970. Later he worked for a time as an assistant for

Kōji Wakamatsu was a Japanese film director who directed such pink films as and . He also produced Nagisa Ōshima's controversial film '' In the Realm of the Senses'' (1976). He has been called "the most important director to emerge in the pink film genre," an ...

's ''Wakamatsu Productions'', a producer of leftist movies.

Attacks

French Embassy attack

Haruo Wakō and two other members of the JRA ( Junzo Okudaira and Jun Nishikawa) were directly involved in the seizure of the French Embassy in The Hague in 1974. The ambassador and ten other people were taken hostage. After lengthy negotiations, the hostages were freed in exchange for the release of the jailed JRA member Yatsuka Furuya, $300,000 and the use of a

Boeing 707 The Boeing 707 is an early American long-range Narrow-body aircraft, narrow-body airliner, the first jetliner developed and produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Developed from the Boeing 367-80 prototype, the initial first flew on Decembe ...

aeroplane, which flew the hostage-takers to Syria. Syria did not consider hostage-taking for money revolutionary and forced them to give up their ransom which was passed on to the French embassy.

AIA building attack

In August 1975, Wakō and other members of the JRA seized the American Insurance Associates (AIA) building which housed several embassies, including the US Embassy in

Kuala Lumpur Kuala Lumpur (KL), officially the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, is the capital city and a Federal Territories of Malaysia, federal territory of Malaysia. It is the largest city in the country, covering an area of with a census population ...

Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...

, taking over 50 hostages. Both seizures resulted in the successful demand for release of six fellow members (including Jun Nishikawa) of the JRA from imprisonment in Japan and a flight to Libya. The hostages included the United States

consul Consul (abbrev. ''cos.''; Latin plural ''consules'') was the title of one of the two chief magistrates of the Roman Republic, and subsequently also an important title under the Roman Empire. The title was used in other European city-states thro ...

Robert Stebbins and the Swedish

chargé d'affaires A (), plural ''chargés d'affaires'', often shortened to ''chargé'' (French) and sometimes in colloquial English to ''charge-D'', is a diplomat who serves as an embassy's chief of mission in the absence of the ambassador. The term is Frenc ...

Fredrik Bergenstråhle and his secretary.

Prison

In May 1997, Wakō was imprisoned with five other suspected JRA members in Lebanon on charges of

forgery Forgery is a white-collar crime that generally consists of the false making or material alteration of a legal instrument with the specific mens rea, intent to wikt:defraud#English, defraud. Tampering with a certain legal instrument may be fo ...

before four of them were

deported Deportation is the expulsion of a person or group of people by a state from its Sovereignty, sovereign territory. The actual definition changes depending on the place and context, and it also changes over time. A person who has been deported or ...

to Jordan in March 2000, the fifth, Kozo Okamoto, was granted asylum for health reasons. As the Jordanian authorities refused to allow Wakō into

Jordan Jordan, officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Jordan is bordered by Syria to the north, Iraq to the east, Saudi Arabia to the south, and Israel and the occupied Palestinian ter ...

, Wakō and the three other suspected JRA members were handed over to Japan to be tried on

terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war aga ...

charges. On March 23, 2005, a Japanese court, presided over by Judge Kunihiko Koma, sentenced Haruo Wakō to life in prison. The court dismissed prosecutors' arguments over the

conspiracy A conspiracy, also known as a plot, ploy, or scheme, is a secret plan or agreement between people (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder, treason, or corruption, especially with a political motivat ...

charge.

Death

Haruo Wakō died on November 4, 2023, at the age of 75.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wako, Haruo 1948 births 2023 deaths Japanese people imprisoned abroad Japanese Red Army Foreign nationals imprisoned in Lebanon People extradited from Jordan People extradited to Japan Japanese prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by Japan Japanese communists People from Shiogama, Miyagi