Photo/Illutration Masaaki Osaka in 2017 (Shiro Nishihata)

A fugitive wanted in the killing of a police officer who had been on the run for more than four decades pleaded not guilty in his first hearing at the Tokyo District Court on Oct. 25.

Masaaki Osaka, 73, is suspected of killing Tsuneo Nakamura, 21, a police officer, after hitting him with iron pipes together with other rioters and hurling Molotov cocktails at him on Nov. 14, 1971, in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward, according to written indictments and other sources.

“None of the charges against me are true. Therefore, I am innocent and not guilty,” Osaka said.

Osaka is a member of a radical leftist group called Chukaku-ha (middle core faction).

He was arrested in 2017 after being on the lam for 46 years.

The riot was in opposition to the agreement between Japan and the United States on the reversion of Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty in exchange for its acceptance of the continued presence of U.S. forces there.

In addition to murder, Osaka is charged with assembling offensive weapons, obstruction of public officers’ duties, bodily harm and arson of inhabited buildings.

“The confession statements by riot participants, which were used as evidence, were just fabricated by police officers,” Osaka argued at the hearing.

He noted that the riot occurred 51 years ago.

“As evidence (about the riot) has been lost, I cannot properly exercise my right to defense,” he said.

In the riot, radical students became aggravated and clashed with riot police.

Along with Nakamura’s death, three other police officers sustained burns and around 300 people were arrested.

Osaka became a wanted person and he went missing after visiting an acquaintance in 1973.

The public security bureau of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department became convinced Osaka was still hiding somewhere in Japan when it searched a Chukaku-ha hideout in Tokyo’s Tachikawa in March 2012.

In May 2017, Osaka prefectural police searched another Chukaku-ha hideout in Hiroshima and arrested a man on suspicion of obstructing an officer’s duties when he rammed himself into a police officer.

The man turned out to be Osaka, whereupon the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department re-arrested him on suspicion of murder.

In March, the Tokyo District Court decided that Osaka will not be tried by lay judges, as it concluded they "could be attacked” if they participate in his trial.

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