On August 8, 1975, the Japanese government released Bandō and flew him to asylum in Libya in response to demands from Japanese Red Army members who had stormed the U.S. and Swedish embassies in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and taken 53 hostages. Bandō later is believed to have assisted in the hijacking of Japan Airlines Flight 472 from Paris to Tokyo in 1977, forcing the jet to land in Dhaka. He remains at large and reportedly spent time between 1997 and 2007 in Russia, China, the Philippines, and Japan.