Dying man in Japan gives deathbed confession to bombings

A dying man in Japan has confessed to being on the country's most wanted list for nearly 50 years as he escaped justice for a series of bombings in the 1970s. He was part of a radical group, but escaped and lived under an alias until his dying breath.

After receiving a tip off, Tokyo police met with a man who was in hospital suffering from terminal cancer. When meeting with the 70-year old, he told them that he wanted to die under his real name, Satoshi Kirishima, and told them previously unknown details of the bombings.

DNA test conducted on him and on relatives showed they were compatible, according to Kyodo News. Police later said: “We believe that the man who died at the hospital after claiming to be Satoshi Kirishima was actually the suspect.”

Kirishima died on Monday after four days of questioning, and was said to be the only one of 10 in the radical group to never be caught.

Born in 1954, Kirishima was a university student in Tokyo when he became involved in extremism and joined the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front, a militant group that carried out a series of bombings targeting major Japanese companies in the 1970s. Eight people died and more than 160 were injured in the 1975 bombing of a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries building, which was blamed on the group.

Kirishima was allegedly involved in a number of the bombings. He was wanted on charges of setting off a timebomb in a building in Tokyo’s upmarket Ginza district in April 1975 in which no one was injured.