Kozo Okamoto, last surviving participant of 1972 Lod Airport massacre, dies

Born into a middle-class family in southern Japan, Kozo Okamoto was the youngest of six children and was an agricultural student at the reputable Kagoshima University. Nothing in that conventional upbringing suggested that he would spend most of his adult life imprisoned, in semihiding, or in exile.

Okamoto died Thursday in Beirut at the age of 78 after a long illness, according to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a group designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union.

He was the last surviving participant of the 1972 Lod Airport massacre in Israel, which helped turn a little-known band of the far-left Japanese Red Army into an internationally notorious movement.