Dying man tells cops he's on most wanted list after being on run for 50 years

03 February 2024 , 19:48

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This man told police his name was Satoshi Kirishima and he had been on the run for decades (Image: getty)

A man told police in Japan he was one of the country's most wanted fugitives - just days before he died of cancer.

The 70-year-old man, who told authorities in Japan his name was Satoshi Kirishima, confessed to being part of a radical group that carried out bombings in the 1970s. Police had received a tip-off and went to the hospital near Tokyo last week to question the pensioner, who had been on the run for nearly 50 years. He told officers he was dying of cancer and wanted to die using his real name instead of his alias and disclosed previously unknown details about the bombings, police said.

But the fugitive died on Monday without police having confirmed his identity, despite four days of questioning. DNA tests conducted on him and on relatives of the suspect in the case showed they were compatible, local media reported. Police would not confirm that report. "We believe that the man who died at the hospital after claiming to be Satoshi Kirishima was actually the suspect," National Police Agency chief Yasuhiro Tsuyuki said.

Born in 1954, Kirishima was a university student in Tokyo when he became involved in extremism and joined the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front, a militant group that carried out a series of bombings targeting major Japanese companies in the 70s.

Police had received a tip-off and went to the hospital near Tokyo last week to question the pensioner (AFP via Getty Images)

Eight people died and more than 160 were injured in the 1975 bombing of a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries building, which was blamed on the group. Kirishima was allegedly involved in a number of the bombings. He was wanted on charges of setting off a time bomb in a building in Tokyo's posh Ginza district in April 1975 in which no one was injured.

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Though not a key member of the group, he was said to be the only one of 10 members who was never caught. While on the run, Kirishima did not have a mobile phone or health insurance and had his salary paid in cash to avoid detection, according to NHK public television. Yesterday police investigators raided a construction company where he had lived and worked using the alias Hiroshi Uchida for about 40 years, NHK and other media said.

A photo on Kirishima's wanted poster shows him smiling, with long hair and glasses. Two members of the group were sentenced to death, including founder Masashi Daidoji, who died on death row in 2017.

Two of the eight members of the group who were indicted in the bombings are still at large after their release in 1977 as part of a deal negotiated by another radical group, the Japanese Red Army, when it hijacked a Japan Airlines plane in Bangladesh.

Bradley Jolly