54 years after the Ben Gurion Airport massacre: The trick that broke the terrorist's silence is revealed
Kozo Okamoto refused to speak and asked to die after failing his mission. According to the transcripts of Rehavam Ze'evi's testimony, he promised to give the terrorist his pistol with one bullet in exchange for information - but never intended to keep the agreement.
"According to the agreement, he must tell the whole truth in response to his interrogators' questions, and after the interrogation is over, I will hand him my pistol with one bullet for his personal use." Thus, according to the transcripts of testimony revealed now for the first time, Rehavam Ze'evi ("Gandhi") testified before the military court in Tzrifin after the massacre at Ben Gurion Airport, in which three Japanese Red Army terrorists murdered 26 people and wounded dozens.
Ze'evi, who served at the time as the GOC Central Command, described to the court one of the unusual interrogation techniques used to extract information from the terrorist Kozo Okamoto.
At the center of the documents, which were revealed in recent days by Adv. Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, president of the Shurat HaDin organization, is Ze'evi's testimony in the military court in Tzrifin from July 1972. In the testimony, Ze'evi described how he was recruited to interrogate Okamoto after the terrorist refused to cooperate because he had failed his mission, which was to end his life after carrying out the attack.
According to the testimony, the interrogators were impressed that Okamoto wanted to die, and built an unusual interrogation trick around his desire: in exchange for a full confession and providing information about his handlers and other attacks planned in Israel, he was, apparently, promised that at the end of the interrogation he would receive a pistol with one bullet "for his personal use."
"After 6-7 days of absolute refusal, he was promised by General Rehavam Ze'evi that if he provided a statement, they would allow him to kill himself," one of the lawyers noted during the proceedings. "After hours of one-sided interrogation, I had a flash of insight that perhaps in order to get him to talk, we need to use different techniques that are not accepted in other similar interrogations," Ze'evi added.
"And then, I reached an agreement with the defendant, according to the agreement he must tell the whole truth in response to his interrogators' questions, and after the interrogation is over, I will hand him my pistol with one bullet for his personal use. This trick succeeded and the guy opened his mouth and started talking."
Later, Ze'evi added that he spoke with Okamoto and presented the offer to him, but emphasized that there was no intention to keep it. According to him, it was a trick intended to break the terrorist's silence and save lives by obtaining intelligence information.
Although the very existence of the trick was reported in the press during Okamoto's trial, the full transcripts that have been revealed now allow a rare glimpse into how one of the most sensitive interrogations in the history of the security establishment was conducted, and into Ze'evi's personal involvement in the attempt to lead the terrorist to provide information.
As mentioned, the documents were revealed by Adv. Darshan-Leitner after they were received as part of a legal proceeding she conducted on behalf of the victims of the massacre against North Korea, claiming that it provided assistance and training to terrorist organizations, including those involved in the attack.
"The interrogation materials and the testimony reached us as part of the legal proceeding we conducted on behalf of the victims of the massacre," she says. "These are materials of exceptional historical value, which allow for the first time to examine closely how the interrogation of the only terrorist caught alive was conducted. This story reminds us that the fight against terror is not conducted only on the battlefield, but also within the walls of the court with one goal, to prevent the next attack."
Okamoto's recent death, after more than five decades in which he lived in Lebanon under the auspices of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, gives the documents renewed historical significance and brings back into the spotlight an affair that was etched as one of the turning points in Israel's fight against terror.
