Kozo Okamoto
Kozo Okamoto was a Japanese terrorist and member of the Japanese Red Army (JRA) who carried out the 1972 Lod Airport massacre. He was the only perpetrator to survive the attack, which killed 26 people and wounded 80 others.
Kozo Okamoto was a central figure in one of the most notorious acts of international terrorism directed against Israel. As a member of the Japanese Red Army (JRA), a far-left militant group, Okamoto was recruited by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) to carry out an attack on Israeli soil. On May 30, 1972, Okamoto and two other JRA operatives arrived at Lod Airport (now Ben Gurion International Airport) on a flight from Rome. After retrieving submachine guns and grenades from their luggage, they opened fire indiscriminately in the arrivals lounge. The massacre resulted in the deaths of 26 people, including 17 Christian pilgrims from Puerto Rico and the prominent Israeli scientist Aharon Katzir. While his two accomplices died during the attack, Okamoto was captured by Israeli security forces. He was sentenced to life imprisonment but was released in 1985 as part of the Jibril Agreement, a prisoner exchange between Israel and the PFLP-GC. Following his release, he eventually found refuge in Lebanon, where he was granted political asylum in 2000. His death in July 2026 marks the end of a life defined by radical ideological violence and the lasting trauma of the victims of the Lod Airport massacre. Despite the severity of his crimes, some survivors, such as Pastor José Vega Franqui, have publicly stated they found the capacity to forgive him in the decades following the tragedy.