Japan Red Army Woman Held After 3 Decades on Run ====================================== By George Nishiyama TOKYO (Reuters) - The 30-year reign of a woman dubbed the ''empress'' for her long leadership of one of the world's most notorious extremist groups ended on Wednesday with her capture outside a hotel in western Japan. Fusako Shigenobu, 55, who media reports said had checked into the hotel disguised as a man, smiled and gave a thumbs up sign to reporters and a crowd of onlookers as she arrived in handcuffs at Tokyo Station, where police had brought her by train from the city of Takatsuki. Shigenobu, leader of the leftist Japanese Red Army, had spent years on the run from international law enforcement authorities. Her arrest in Japan came as a surprise, because she had been believed to be living in Lebanon. She was reported to be carrying a laptop computer and several floppy disks when arrested, media reports said. Police said she was being held for her alleged role in violent crimes by the Japanese Red Army -- once one of the world's most feared extremist groups. Government officials expressed relief at her arrest, and the news vied for top billing in Japanese evening newspapers with the U.S. presidential election. Evening television news programs carried live aerial footage of her being brought to the capital. ``It's great that a person who was involved in all sorts of terrorist acts from the late 60s has been arrested,'' Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori was quoted as saying by Kyodo news agency. The top government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda, told a news conference: ``I hope her arrest will become a stepping stone leading to the capture of other members still on the run.'' On Wanted List Shigenobu had been on the international wanted list for allegedly masterminding the Japanese Red Army's 1974 attack on the French embassy in the Netherlands city of The Hague, in which it took the French ambassador hostage in return for the release of an imprisoned comrade. The Japanese Red Army was born out of the 1960s anti-Vietnam War movement and advocated the destruction of capitalism. Its members fought at home against the presence of U.S. forces in Japan and then in the early 1970s took their struggle overseas. Shigenobu, originally a member of the Red Army Faction group, traveled to Lebanon in 1971 and founded the Japanese Red Army, which linked up with Palestinian extremists to become an implacable foe of Israel. The Japanese Red Army became known in the 1970s for a series of deadly and spectacular attacks, ranging from plane hijackings to hostage taking. Among those was the 1972 attack on Israel's Lod airport in which 26 people, including two Red Army members, were killed in a hail of machine-gun fire and grenade blasts. Last May, Tokyo police arrested four Red Army members who allegedly took part in various hijackings, embassy seizures and other crimes after they were deported from Lebanon. But Lebanon granted political asylum to another member, Kozo Okamoto, for his role in operations against Israel. Okamoto, who was arrested for the attack on Lod airport and imprisoned in Israel, had been freed in 1985 in an exchange of prisoners between Israeli and Palestinian forces. But with the end of the Cold War and moves for peace accelerating in the Middle East, the group's presence became troublesome for many Arab nations and it was dealt a blow after it reportedly lost its base in Lebanon in 1997. Shigenobu's arrest may spell the end of the weakened organization, Japanese media said. The Japanese Red Army had its roots in another extreme leftist group, the Red Army Faction. Members of that group were allegedly responsible for hijacking a Japan Airlines (JAL) plane on a domestic flight and forcing it to fly to Pyongyang in March 1970 in what was Japan's first hijacking. The suspects were granted political asylum in North Korea and their extradition to Japan has been one of the issues hindering normalization of ties between Tokyo and Pyongyang. ===================================================
