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Smoking Habit Tips Japanese Police
Nov. 10 -- You can run and hide but you can’t change the way you smoke. So Japan’s most wanted woman discovered.
And Fusako Shigenobu, the notorious leader of the extreme leftist Japanese Red Army did have an iconoclastic smoking style.
She puffed on her cigarette as if it were a pipe and exhaled perfect smoke rings.
On Wednesday, in a rural town in western Japan though, Shigenobu found that after 30 years on the run, she couldn’t blow smoke rings around the Japanese police anymore.
Her smoking style was a vital clue that convinced the police they had found their woman, who until then was believed to be living in Lebanon, the Sankei Shimbun newspaper said today.
Dubbed the “empress” for her long leadership of one of the world’s most notorious extremist groups, the 55-year-old Shigenobu had dodged police across three continents since allegedly masterminding a 1974 attack on the French embassy in the The Hague. In a daring mission, her Red Army kidnapped the French ambassador who was later freed in exchange for the release of an imprisoned comrade.
A New Look
That was a long time ago, when Shigenobu’s stunning beauty was the subject of headlines and lore. Not only has age made some alterations, she has often disguised herself as a man, as she did when she checked into a hotel in the little Japanese town where she was captured.
“Shigenobu must have believed that since her appearance hadchanged so much, we wouldn’t notice,” said an officer quoted in Sankei Shimbun. “It was that little something that got her.”
Police, however, did not comment publicly on how they found Shigenobu. Japan’s Kyodo news agency said authorities received a tip in July that she was in Japan.
In late October, investigators spotted a woman matching herdescription at a hideout of leftist radicals, Kyodo said.
Arrest Brings Relief
On Wednesday, as Shigenobu stepped out of a train taking her back to Tokyo, she appeared unrepentant. She raised her handcuffed wrists high in the air and made a thumbs-up sign.
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