Japanese Terrorist Planned ‘Mass Murder,’ U.S. Says

An accused Japanese terrorist, caught on the New Jersey Turnpike last year with three powerful home-made pipe bombs in his car, was planning “indiscriminate mass murder and mayhem” by blowing up a Navy recruiting office in Manhattan as part of a broader Libyan-engineered wave of violence, federal prosecutors alleged in a memorandum made public Friday.

Yu Kikumura, 36, was arrested last April at a turnpike rest stop only two days before the second anniversary of a U.S. bombing of Libya--an anniversary that was marked by a blast that killed five people and wounded 18 at a USO Club in Naples.

“Kikumura’s mission in the United States, we submit, was to carry out a parallel attack on American soil. Evidence strongly suggests that Kikumura was planning to detonate his bombs at approximately the same time as the deadly Naples bombing,” U.S. Atty. Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote. He added that the prime suspect in the Naples bombing is Junzo Okudaira, whom a government informant identified as a colleague of Kikumura.

Three Sites Indicated

In earlier reports, government sources had indicated that Kikumura had also planned to bomb the United Nations headquarters and Manhattan’s busy garment district. However, only one site--the Navy recruiting center--was mentioned in the document.

The memo was prepared for Kikumura’s sentencing, scheduled to take place in Newark, N.J., on Monday on 12 counts that range from weapons violations to breaking passport and visa laws. Allegedly a member of the Japanese Red Army, Kikumura was convicted in November after a brief trial before a judge in Newark, in which he did not contest the charges.

Under new sentencing guidelines, Kikumura stands to spend less than three years in jail. Describing such a light sentence as absurd in view of the serious threat that Kikumura allegedly posed, prosecutors argued in the document that the guidelines should be ignored. They suggested that he should spend most, and possible all, of his life in prison.

Release of the document marked the first time in which the government publicly spelled out what its investigation has revealed about Kikumura’s mission.

Kikumura’s attorneys, Ronald L. Kuby and William M. Kunstler, responded with their own memorandum, in which they described the government’s evidence as mere “innuendo and guesswork.”

“It’s garbage. It’s the most dangerous kind of lies, because the government is trying to use these lies to whip up hysteria,” Kuby said in an interview. Most chilling, he said, is the government’s argument that it should not be required to bring forward its witnesses for a hearing on its request for a stiffer sentence.

Kuby said that breaking the sentencing guidelines without a full hearing would set a precedent of “denying constitutional rights to anyone the government considers to be a terrorist.”

Report From Informant

Much of the evidence was based on the report of an informant, identified by the government as an admitted terrorist, who claimed to have met Kikumura and other Japanese Red Army members at a training camp in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley around 1984. The informant described Kikumura as a “country boy” who went by the Arab name Abu Shams.

U.S. intelligence sources have said in the past that they believe Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi was seeking to forge alliances with the Japanese Red Army and other international terrorist groups.

At the camp, the informant said, Kikumura demonstrated that he was “a competent commando who had knowledge about explosives.”

The government accused Kikumura of slipping into the United States last year on a doctored passport and renting an apartment in Manhattan, from which to carry out his plan.

Accumulates Supplies

Investigation revealed that Kikumura traveled thousands of miles through at least 11 states in his 1980 Mazda and accumulated the supplies necessary to build the bombs at such stores as a K mart in Lexington, Ky., and an art store in Nashville, Tenn.

Each bomb was built by packing gunpowder and lead pellets into a fire extinguisher. The gunpowder gave the bomb enough power to demolish a building, but the lead shot was useful only in causing “horrible injury to people,” according to the memorandum.

Kikumura was arrested by a New Jersey state trooper, who had stopped his car because he thought Kikumura was acting suspiciously.