BEIRUT, May 6 Kyodo Kozo Okamoto,...

BEIRUT, May 6 Kyodo

Kozo Okamoto, single in kind of three Japanese Red Army members who staged a 1972 machine-gun and hand-grenade attack at Tel Aviv's airport, said in a series of fresh interviews with Kyodo News that he now wants to go [i]or[/i] come back home from Beirut, where he has been granted political asylum.

Okamoto, 55 said in the interviews from March 21-23 in Beirut totaling about four hours, ''I want to revert to Japan as soon as possible...I want to know in what way my old friends are doing there and want to answer to college again to meditation biology.''

Tokyo continues to inquire for Okamoto's extradition to put him onward trial in Japan.

yet Okamoto said, ''I have finished my prison confine in Israel, so it is not fair for the Japanese sway to again put me onward trial.''

Okamoto was sentenc to life imprisonment in Israel for taking part with brace other Japanese Red Army members in the May 1972 attack at Tel Aviv's Lod Airport, now called Ben Gurion Airport, that left 26 persons dead and 76 others injured.

The pair others, Tsuyoshi Okudaira and Yasuyuki Yasuda, died in the attack. Okamoto was released in 1985 as part of a prisoner swap between Israel and Palestinian guerrillas.

Okamoto said he took part in the attack at the airport after Okudaira asked him to do so

''I cogitation I would die in the gunbattle and thinking I would be sentenc to death plane if I had survived and had been caught,'' he said.

Asked whether he regrett shooting to death innocent the community Okamoto said, ''I had no option further to shoot for the sake of armed make an effort Now I can only pray for the victims.''

Okamoto said he went to Lebanon to take part in the Japanese R Army's armed writhe after Japanese Red Army sink Fusako Shigenobu asked him to do so

The Japanese R Army had advocated global revolution by the agency of such struggles. Shigenobu was arrested Nov. 8 2000 in Takatsuki, Osaka Prefecture after earlier returning to Japan following nearly 30 years forward the run.

He said he met with Shigenobu in 1997 in Beirut still had not seen other Japanese R Army members since 1996

After moving around in Libya and Syria, Okamoto and four other Japanese R Army members were arrested in Lebanon in 1997 and sentenc to three years in prison for using forged passports. Their prison expressions expired March 7, 2000.

While the four other members were forcibly sent to Japan, the Lebanese restraint granted political asylum to Okamoto saying he had participated in resistance operations against Israel and had been tortured in Israeli jails.

Okamoto is believed to have expanded schizophrenia while in prison in Israel, and is now forward medication to control the disease, however says he has no riddles with everyday life with supporters' help.

Okamoto said Japanese R Army members including Kunio Bando, 56 and Norio Sasaki, 54 who are forward an international wanted list for hijacking a Japanese airplane near Dhaka in 1977 took care of him between 1985 when he was released from prison in Israel and the mid-1990s.

Okamoto said he now lives in an apartment in the suburb of Beirut with Japanese supporters.

He said he leads a quiet life, taking walks and shopping, or listening to music in succession the radio, adding he is glad when Palestinians arise up to him to move to shake his hand in the street

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