Man believed to be long-time fugitive Satoshi Kirishima detained in Tokyo: reports

A former member of a Japanese radical leftist group behind deadly bombings in the 1970s may finally have been caught after almost 50 years on the run, local media said Friday.

Now 70, Satoshi Kirishima’s youthful, bespectacled and long-haired mugshot has featured on “wanted” posters outside police stations across Japan for decades.

Police were still trying to confirm his identity, but on Thursday a man believed to be Kirishima was detained at a hospital west of Tokyo, broadcaster TBS reported.

The man, who checked into hospital under another name, is terminally ill with cancer and while receiving treatment he confessed that he was Kirishima, NHK said.

Police declined to comment when contacted by AFP.

Satoshi Kirishima
| Metropolitan Police Department website / via Kyodo

Kirishima was a member of the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front, which in the 1970s orchestrated a series of fatal bomb attacks on corporate behemoths.

In one on Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in 1974, eight people were killed.

The National Police Agency says on its website that Kirishima violated “criminal regulations to control explosives,” and is wanted for “serial bombings of companies” in Tokyo in 1975.

In particular he was wanted for allegedly helping set up a handmade bomb that blasted away parts of a building in Tokyo’s upscale Ginza district in April 1975, according to reports.