2 cases from Middle East
Convicted: Fusako Shigenobu
On May 28, 2022, a 76-year-old woman in a black hat and gray suit walked out of a Tokyo prison and let her daughter drape a Palestinian keffiyeh around her shoulders. Cameras clicked. Supporters waved Palestinian flags. And Fusako Shigenobu, the woman Western media had dubbed 'the Empress of Terror,' blinked into the daylight after two decades behind bars. For thirty years before her arrest, she had been one of the world's most wanted fugitives: the founder of the Japanese Red Army, a group linked to bombings, hijackings, and one of the deadliest airport massacres in history. On May 30, 1972, three JRA militants opened fire with automatic weapons at Lod Airport near Tel Aviv, killing 26 people and wounding approximately 80 more in a crowded arrival hall. Shigenobu was never charged for that attack. Born in postwar Tokyo to a disgraced ultranationalist father, she transformed herself from a Kikkoman soy sauce office worker into a global revolutionary, building an armed network from the refugee camps of Beirut while raising a stateless daughter in the shadows. This is the story of how she got there, what she built, and what remains unanswered.
Defendant: Leila Khaled
Leila Khaled, born in 1944, is a Palestinian former militant and activist. She was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). Khaled is known for being the first woman to hijack an airplane. Her first hijacking was in 1969 on a flight from Rome to Athens, which was diverted to Damascus. A year later, she attempted another hijack on a flight from Amsterdam to New York, but this was thwarted by the air marshals on board.
