DNA tests show dead man likely 1970s bombing fugitive in Japan

DNA tests have shown that a man who died earlier this week at a hospital is likely to be the person wanted for one of a series of terrorist bombings in Japan during the 1970s, investigative sources said Friday.

The man confessed last month to being the alleged bomber, Satoshi Kirishima, who was a member of an extreme left-wing group. The DNA test results conducted on the suspect’s relatives found that “there is no inconsistency in kinship” between them, the sources said.

Also on Friday, police searched the man’s house in Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, for documents that could confirm his identity.

Kirishima was a member of the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front, a radical group that carried out the high-profile bombings. He has long been wanted on suspicions that he planted and detonated a homemade bomb in a building in Tokyo’s Ginza district on April 19, 1975.

If the man is confirmed to be Kirishima, who would now be 70 years old, police plan to refer the case to prosecutors.

The man who died earlier this week had lived under the name Hiroshi Uchida and was an employee of a building firm in Fujisawa for around 40 years.

He had been making outpatient visits to a hospital in Kamakura in Kanagawa Prefecture for about a year before being hospitalized in January.

He confessed to being Kirishima four days before his death on Monday after undergoing treatment for terminal stomach cancer.