Japanese Red Army founder Fusako Shigenobu, who was arrested in Osaka Prefecture on Wednesday, since 1998 had met in China and Russia with fellow fugitive members of the leftist guerrilla group in apparent efforts to revive the group, public security sources said.
Among those with whom Shigenobu is alleged to have met are 51-year-old Junzo Okudaira, who was allegedly involved in embassy seizures in The Hague and Kuala Lumpur in 1974 and 1975, and 53-year-old Kunio Bando, who is suspected of involvement in the 1972 capture of a mountain lodge in Nagano Prefecture that left three people dead, the sources told Kyodo News.
Shigenobu, 55, attended a 1997 meeting organized by her supporters in China and met the two men at similar gatherings in Shanghai in May 1998 and Moscow in June 1999.
Shigenobu formed the Japanese Red Army after entering Lebanon in 1971 to support Palestinian guerrillas. She allegedly masterminded or participated in a series of terrorist attacks outside Japan in the 1970s.
They included an armed assault in 1972 by three Red Army members on Tel Aviv's Lod airport, later renamed Ben Gurion airport, that left about 25 people dead. Red Army cadre Takeshi Okudaira, Shigenobu's husband and Junzo's brother, died in the attack.
But the group weakened over the next two decades. Another suspect in the attack, 52-year-old Kozo Okamoto, was detained by Lebanese authorities in 1997, when the group had at most 40 members, the sources added.
Shigenobu is believed to have made several trips between Hong Kong and Beijing since 1997.