Founded on 1 January 1975, UTK is the brainchild of then Inspector-General of Police, Tun Hanif Omar. They were also deployed in the first mission during the Japanese Red Army (; Rōmaji: "Nihon Sekigun") hostage incident on 5 August 1975 when the terrorists held approximately 50 civilians including members of the US consulate and the Swedish "chargé d'affaires" as hostages within the AIA building housing several embassies in Kuala Lumpur, two years after the massacre of Israeli hostages in Munich, West Germany by the Palestinian Black September army group in 1973. The terrorists won the release of five imprisoned comrades and flew with them to Libya.