U.S. court fines North Korea over 1972 terror attack in Israel

Thirty-eight years after a deadly terrorist attack at Lod Airport, now known as Ben-Gurion International Airport, in Tel Aviv, a U.S. federal court has found North Korea guilty of aiding the terrorists and has fined Pyongyang $300 million.

	Kozo Okamoto, one of the terrorists who carroed out the 1972 attack at Lod airport in Tel Aviv.
	Photo by: AP

The attack, in which 26 people were killed and more than 80 wounded, was carried out by the Japanese Red Army and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine with material support from North Korea.

"North Korea's demonstrated and well-known policy to encourage, support and direct a campaign of murder against civilians amply justifies the imposition of punitive damages against it," Judge Francisco A. Besosa of the U.S. District Court in Puerto Rico said in a ruling Friday.

Judge Besosa said the court would adopt the "typical punitive damages award of $300 million," since North Korea's "budget for the export of terrorism is not known."

The victims included 16 Christian pilgrims from Puerto Rico and Israeli professor and biophysicist Aharon Katzir.

While two of the terrorists were killed in the attack, one of them having committed suicide, the third, Kozo Okamoto, was captured and sentenced to life in prison.

Okamoto was subsequently released from Israeli prison 13 years later, in 1985, as part of the Jibril prison exchange deal, one of the 1,150 security prisoners released in exchange for three Israeli prisoners captured during the First Lebanon War.

The lawsuit against North Korea stemmed from claims it sponsored the PFLP and the Japanese Red Army, providing material support to both organizations and assistance in planning the attack.

The three terrorists arrived on an Air France flight from Paris and drew automatic guns and hand grenades, firing fired randomly at anybody in sight, after their luggage came through baggage claims.