FOUNDER of the revolutionary Japanese Red Army Fusako Shigenobu was freed from prison on Saturday after serving nearly 22 years behind bars on a string of terror-related charges. 

“I feel strongly that I have finally come out alive,” she told crowds of supporters as she was welcomed by her daughter Mei in the capital Tokyo.  

“I apologise for the inconvenience my arrest has caused to so many people,” Ms Shigenobu told reporters. “It’s half a century ago … but we caused harm to innocent people who were strangers to us by putting our struggle first, such as by hostage-taking.”

Supporters held up banners saying “We love Fusako” as she was driven away in a black car accompanied by her daughter. 

Ms Shigenobu helped found the Red Army in 1971, which waged an armed struggle for the oppressed people and in support of the liberation of Palestine. 

She worked closely with Gassan Kanafani and his Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), with whom the Red Army often co-ordinated activities. 

Members of her organisation took part in a number of international military operations, including a 1972 airport attack in Israel. At least 26 people were killed and more than 80 injured as a result of the assault in Tel Aviv, which targeted Aharon Katzir, the lead scientist for Israel’s biological weapons programme. Japanese fighter Kozo Okamoto was captured, spending decades in jail before being released as part of a prisoner exchange deal. 

For decades Ms Shigenobu lived as a fugitive in the Middle East, from where she helped mastermind a number of airplane hijackings and kidnaps, along with the takeover of the US consulate in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1975.

She was arrested in the Japanese city of Osaka in 2000 and imprisoned in Tokyo after she was sentenced to 20 years for her role in a 1974 seizing of the French embassy in the Netherlands. 

In 2008 Ms Shigenobu was diagnosed with colon and intestinal cancer, undergoing several operations, and on Saturday said she wanted to focus on her treatment. 

The Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network welcomed the release of “this courageous freedom fighter. 

“Fusako Shigenobu’s legacy of internationalist commitment and sacrifice for Palestinian liberation is an honourable, inspirational life of struggle that reminds all of us of our responsibility to act, to organise and to resist imperialism,” it said in a statement. 

The Palestinian Youth Movement said that the 76-year old was “a lifelong comrade of the Palestinian people and struggle.”