oyuki

Monday, January 05, 2009

Terrorists as Criminals Meme

Decided to extract another juicy bit of information from Kupperman and Kamen's book Final Warning. I will let all of you decide after this one example if treating terrorism as a common crime is really that smart.

From page 11 I will paraphrase. In April of 1988 New Jersey State Trooper Robert Cieplensky's suspicions were aroused at a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike by a Japanese man. After getting permission to investigate the man's car, Trooper Cieplensky found three red cylinders on the car's backseat. Suspecting them to be bombs, the man, later identified as Yu Kikumura, was quickly arrested. Mr. Kikumura waived a trail by jury and was convicted. Yu Kikumura is a member of the Japanese Red Army terrorist group with ties to North Korea and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. That Kikumura was in the United States was only because a year earlier he was released by a Dutch judge who ruled the police violated his rights. Kikumura was arrested at Schipol Airport with a bomb disguised as a can of breakfast food. X-ray machines could not discern it as a bomb, but there was 1Kg of explosives in there. The Dutch judge applied the probable cause criteria used in a routine burglarly to this case. So Kikumura was released only to turn up a year later in New Jersey.

For those who woke up to global terrorism after 9/11 and the Clinton vacation from history, a little information about the Japanese Red Army needs to be presented. The JRA was formed in 1971 in Lebanon by Fusako Shigenobu, dubbed the empress of terror. JRA's claim to international terror infamy came in May 1972 when they attacked passengers at Lod, now Ben Gurion, Airport in Tel Aviv where 24 were killed and 80 injured. Fusako Shigenobu is presently in Japanese prison serving a 20 year sentence in part for the taking of the French embassy in the Hague in September of 1974. She blames the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine for that attack. In 2001 she formally disbanded the JRA from her prison cell but vows to continue the struggle peacefully.

Please note that both Kupperman/Kamen's book in 1989 and the Guardian's article from December 13, 2008 link what is nominally a communist terrorist organization with that of a Palestinian terrorist organization. This should not come as a surprise as both share a common cause, the destruction of the West and both were bankrolled covertly by such as the USSR.

Lets get back to Yu Kikumura's case. Here is the DOJ rebuttal that the FBI's expert witness misled the judge during Kikumura's trial. What is telling is what was in those fire extinguisher casings.
The red cylinders were fire extinguishers that had been emptied and refilled with about three pounds of gunpowder, wadding, about three pounds of lead shot, and a flashbulb connected to some wires running out of the top. On one of the bombs, there was an assembled fusing system made from an electric timer, a toggle switch, some batteries, and jack connectors. This timer, Thurman concluded, would allow the bomb to be detonated up to an hour after it was set. The car also contained materials from which similar fusing systems for the other two bombs could be made.
Thurman testified about the bombs found in Kikumura's car. After describing their construction and stating that the completed timer was functional, Thurman discussed the destructive force of the bombs. He said that if the bombs were detonated in an occupied large room with a ten foot ceiling, there would be numerous casualties and significant property damage. He compared the bombs to Claymore mines and opined that, while they were capable of destroying property, they were meant as anti-personnel devices.

Two days after Kikumura was arrested in New Jersey, his comrades in the JRA attacked the USO Service Club in Naples, Italy. One US Navy enlisted woman and four innocent civilians were killed in the explosion.

In October, 2007 Yu Kikumura was released from a US Supermax prison and turned over to Japanese authorities. And there are people who think Yu Kikumura is a hero, an anti-imperialist, and a political prisoner. Like these people, don't click if you don't want to give them traffic but they want to help Yu Kikumura. They probably wear t-shirts with Che's image on it, another hero and anti-imperialist. Yuck.

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