Japanese police revealed on Tuesday (Feb 27) that DNA analysis conducted after the death of an elderly man confirmed his identity as Japan’s most sought-after fugitive. This confirmation came after the man, Satoshi Kirishima, confessed on his deathbed in a hospital last month. Kirishima had been evading authorities for decades and was a former member of a radical leftist group responsible for deadly bomb attacks in the 1970s. This revelation sheds light on a nearly 50-year-old mystery.
A spokesperson for the Tokyo police informed AFP on Tuesday that the individual who passed away at the hospital on January 29 was indeed Satoshi Kirishima himself. Kirishima’s smiling, bespectacled mugshot had long been displayed outside police stations throughout Japan. His name resurfaced in headlines last month when a terminally ill man confessed in a hospital outside Tokyo that he was, in fact, Kirishima. Although the hospital promptly notified the police, the man succumbed to his illness shortly after.
The Tokyo police have since forwarded five case files related to Kirishima to the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors office. One of these cases involves Kirishima’s alleged planting of a homemade bomb, which detonated in Tokyo’s Ginza district, causing damage to a building in April 1975.
Reports from local media suggest that Kirishima was interrogated by police shortly before his demise. During these sessions, he divulged intimate details about his life and the extremist group, information only he would possess, further corroborating his identity.
In his youth, Kirishima was associated with the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front, a radical leftist organization responsible for several fatal bombings targeting corporations, including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
Before passing away, Kirishima reportedly expressed his desire to depart this world under his true identity, telling hospital staff, “I want to meet my death with my real name.”
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