“Deathbed confessions” like this present interesting philosophical situations when it comes to law and justice.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

For decades, the smiling mugshot of Satoshi Kirishima has featured on wanted posters outside police stations across Japan.

Kirishima had belonged to the East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front - a radical, left-wing organisation believed to be behind several bombings against companies in Japan’s capital between 1972 and 1975.

Japan’s National Police Agency says on its website that Kirishima violated “criminal regulations to control explosives”, and is wanted for “serial bombings of companies”.

Kirishima is alleged to have help plant and detonate a homemade bomb that destroyed part of a building in Tokyo’s Ginza district in one particular attack on 18 April 1975, according to local media.

But he told hospital officials on Thursday he was actually Kirishima, saying he wanted to use his “real name” in his final moments as he only has a few months left to live, according to reports.

Police are now carrying out DNA tests to confirm his identity, describing his possible re-emergence as a bolt out of the blue.

The original article contains 275 words, the summary contains 164 words. Saved 40%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

This guy hated Japan so much that he joined an anti-Japanese extremist group to kill his countrymen, then only to live out the rest of his years in Japan and die there at the age of 70. What an odd species we are.

It’s going to be weird not seeing his face on every police box in the country anymore.

Ah always lots of respect to the radicals of the ~70s, nothing like the sit and ‘protest’ nonsense today, straight to the action.