Haruo Wako
Encyclopedia
was a member of the armed militant group, the Japanese Red Army
.
Haruo Wakō and two other members of the JRA were involved in the seizure of the French Embassy in The Hague in 1974
. The ambassador and ten other people were taken hostage and a Dutch policewoman, Hanke Remmerswaal, was shot in the back, puncturing a lung. After lengthy negotiatons, the hostages were freed in exchange for the release of a jailed Red Army member (Yatsuka Furuya), $300,000 and the use of a plane. The plane flew the hostage-takers first to Aden, South Yemen, where they were not accepted and then to Syria. Syria did not consider hostage taking for money revolutionary, and forced them to give up their ransom.
In 1975, Wakō and other members of the JRA seized the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur. Both seizures resulted in the successful demand for release of six fellow members (among others fellow French embassy hostage taker Jun Nishikawa
)of the JRA from imprisonment in Japan.
In May 1985, he was imprisoned in Lebanon on charges of forgery yet was sent to Jordan. As the Jordanian authorities refused to allow him into Jordan, he was handed over to Japan.
On 23 March 2005 a Japanese court, presided by Judge Kunihiko Koma, sentenced Haruo Wakō to life in prison, after he and three fellow Japanese Red Army members were extradited to Japan from Jordan in March 2000. In Wako's case, the court dismissed prosecutors' arguments over the conspiracy charge.
Japanese Red Army
The was a Communist terrorist group founded by Fusako Shigenobu early in 1971 in Lebanon. It sometimes called itself Arab-JRA after the Lod airport massacre...
.
Haruo Wakō and two other members of the JRA were involved in the seizure of the French Embassy in The Hague in 1974
1974 French Embassy attack in The Hague
On September 13, 1974, three members of the Japanese Red Army stormed the French Embassy in The Hague allegedly on Fusaku Shigenobu's orders. The ambassador and ten other people were taken hostage and a Dutch policewoman, Hanke Remmerswaal, was shot in the back, puncturing a lung...
. The ambassador and ten other people were taken hostage and a Dutch policewoman, Hanke Remmerswaal, was shot in the back, puncturing a lung. After lengthy negotiatons, the hostages were freed in exchange for the release of a jailed Red Army member (Yatsuka Furuya), $300,000 and the use of a plane. The plane flew the hostage-takers first to Aden, South Yemen, where they were not accepted and then to Syria. Syria did not consider hostage taking for money revolutionary, and forced them to give up their ransom.
In 1975, Wakō and other members of the JRA seized the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur. Both seizures resulted in the successful demand for release of six fellow members (among others fellow French embassy hostage taker Jun Nishikawa
Jun Nishikawa
is a former member of the Japanese Red Army .He was a member of the group that attacked the French embassy in The Hague in 1974. Nishikawa was arrested in Stockholm in 1975 and freed months later in exchange for hostages taken by the Japanese Red Army at the United States consulate in the Malaysian...
)of the JRA from imprisonment in Japan.
In May 1985, he was imprisoned in Lebanon on charges of forgery yet was sent to Jordan. As the Jordanian authorities refused to allow him into Jordan, he was handed over to Japan.
On 23 March 2005 a Japanese court, presided by Judge Kunihiko Koma, sentenced Haruo Wakō to life in prison, after he and three fellow Japanese Red Army members were extradited to Japan from Jordan in March 2000. In Wako's case, the court dismissed prosecutors' arguments over the conspiracy charge.