Alleged Terrorist Gets 30-Year Sentence

A federal judge sentenced an alleged member of the Japanese Red Army to 30 years in prison Tuesday, saying he was an “international terrorist” who had planned to “kill and injure scores of innocent people” with three homemade bombs.

U. S. District Court Judge Alfred J. Lechner Jr. set the sentence after Yu Kikumura, a small man with shoulder-length hair and a long beard, stood in court to denounce the United States for “illegal and immoral acts of state terrorism” against Libya.

Kikumura, in a statement he read in thickly accented English, denied he was “linked to Libya,” as prosecutors had alleged. “I came to the U. S. because of my interests and intentions,” he said.

The case has drawn international interest because of the light, however dim, it has shed on the connections among international terrorist organizations.

An FBI affidavit filed with the court Tuesday said that Kikumura had joined other Japanese Red Army members in late 1986 at a secret base in Bekaa Valley in Lebanon for training in the use of firearms, explosives and commando tactics.

The Japanese Red Army, formed in 1969 as an ultra-leftist offshoot of the Japanese Communist Party, has been linked to numerous terrorist incidents since 1972.

Kikumura was arrested last April 12 at a New Jersey Turnpike rest stop after state troopers found in his car three fire extinguishers filled with powerful explosives and an assortment of timing devices, detonators and other materiel.

Investigators later found that Kikumura had bought the equipment on a month-long, 7,000-mile car trip through at least 11 states. Evidence also showed he had been arrested for smuggling detonators and gunpowder into Holland two years ago, but the case was dismissed on a technicality and he was deported.

Prosecutors claimed in court papers that Kikumura had been planning to bomb a Navy recruiting office in New York City on April 14, as an act of revenge for the U. S. bombing of Libya two years earlier. Another Japanese Red Army member is the prime suspect the April 14, 1988, car-bombing attack on a USO Club in Naples, Italy, that killed five people and injured 18 others.

U. S. Atty. Samuel A. Alito Jr. acknowledged Tuesday, however, that he was “not certain” of Kikumura’s intended target. Investigators focused on the recruiting center after they found a small red mark on a map of Manhattan that Kikumura carried in his car.

Shown in court, the map also bore several other markings, which were not explained, and prosecutors acknowledged they could not find anyone who had seen Kikumura at the recruiting center.

Lechner said that Kikumura, 36, is not eligible for parole and must serve at least 25 1/2 years in prison. The judge ordered that he be deported on release from prison, and said the nature of the offense justified a sentence more than 10 times that recommended in federal sentencing guidelines.

“You planned to kill and injure scores of innocent people,” he told Kikumura. “There is no conclusion that can be drawn, other than that you are an international terrorist.”

Kikumura was convicted last November of illegal possession and interstate transportation of explosives.