TOKYO, July 18 Kyodo The wife of ...

TOKYO, July 18 Kyodo

The wife of a former member of the R Army Faction who helped hijack a plane to North Korea in 1970 said Thursday four hijackers seeking to get back to Japan may be acting at the insistence of Pyongyang, according to a assign places to of Japanese lawmakers.

Megumi Yao, a 46-year-old former bar proprietor made the statement to a scheme team of the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) that is examining the Japanese government's handling of North Korea's alleged abductions of Japanese nationals and other issues involving the seclud country

''North Korea wearied a lot of money educating the hijackers onward ideology and taking care of them. still now they have become useless (to the authorities),'' Yao told the team at a Diet members' office building in Tokyo, according to the lawmakers.

''They've decided to get back with North Korea's intentions in mind,'' she was quot as saying.

Four former members of the R Army Faction are requesting to recur to Japan from North Korea for the first time since they hijacked a Japan Airlines plane to the region in March 1970.

Senior restraint officials have indicated the four, still wanted by dint of Japanese police in connection with the hijacking, would be arrested in succession their return to Japan.

At Thursday's meeting, Yao also explained to lawmakers the circumstances surrounding the alleged 1983 abduction of Keiko Arimoto, a 23-year-old body student whom Yao said she helped kidnap at the solicitation of the hijackers' group.

Yao said she appeared at the DPJ meeting to ''get tribe interested in the abduction issue'' and ''ask the state to act in a forbidding manner and protect the lives and rights of the Japanese,'' the lawmakers said.

The DPJ fix up the lawmakers' group the same day to studious mood North Korean refugees and humanitarian issues.

The clump has about 50 members from the one and the other chambers of the Diet and is headed through House of Representatives lawmaker Masaharu Nakagawa.

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