Japanese Red Army member pleads not guilty over 1986 embassy attack in Jakarta

A member of the Japanese Red Army radical group pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to charges including attempted murder over a 1986 mortar attack on the Japanese Embassy in Indonesia.

“It is a complete hoax and I am not guilty,” said Tsutomu Shirosaki, a 68-year-old member of the militant group set up in the early 1970s, in the first hearing of his trial held at the Tokyo District Court.

According to the indictment, Shirosaki conspired to fire two mortar shells towards the Japanese Embassy from a hotel room in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta on May 14, 1986. Nobody was injured in the incident as the bombs did not explode.

He is also suspected of using someone else’s passport at a local hotel and a car rental company.

In the opening statement, prosecutors said fingerprints were found in the hotel room. But Shirosaki’s defence lawyers said he was not in Indonesia at the time and had been in Lebanon since 1977, adding that the fingerprints could have been collected at another site.

Shirosaki was arrested in Japan for attempted bank robbery and sentenced to a 10-year term in 1971. He was released in 1977 along with other radicals in exchange for hostages taken by the group in the hijacking of a Japan Airlines jetliner in the Bangladesh capital of Dhaka.