Today in Labor History August 4, 1975: The Japanese Red Army took 50 hostages, including the U.S. Consul, at the American Insurance Associates Building, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where several embassies were housed. They demanded the release of several of their imprisoned leaders, and threatened to massacre all 53 hostages if their demands were not met. Eventually, the Japanese government relented and released five JRA leaders, sending them on a Japanese Airlines DC-8 to Kuala Lumpur. The terrorists, and their freed leaders, were flown to Libya, where Muammar Gaddafi gave them shelter. The Japanese Red Army was a communist terrorist organization that was trying to end the Japanese monarchy and launch a worldwide revolution. They carried out numerous attacks and assassinations in the 1970s, including the Lod Airport massacre, in Tel Aviv, three years earlier. The majority of the 26 people slaughtered in the Lod massacre were Christian pilgrims from Puerto Rican. The one JRA member who survived the counter attack, Kōzō Okamoto, was released from Israeli prison after 11 years and is currently living in exile, in Lebanon, still under arrest warrant from the Japanese government.
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