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a man Admits to killing former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Has been sentenced to life imprisonment.
Tetsuya Yamama, 45, pleads guilty to shooting Abe period Nara campaign debut July 2022.
mountain pleads guilty At the Nara District Court hearing in October, leaves no doubt about the verdict and focus on the severity of his punishment.
Public opinion in Japan is divided into two groups. One group believes that this is well thought out. assassinationand others who see the mountain as a deeply troubled man.
Prosecutors called the attack an “extremely serious incident unprecedented in postwar history.”
this Former leader delivers speech tour in western city of Nara when he was struck by a bullet fired from a homemade gun. Abe, 67, collapsed on the spot and died later. The killings are shocking Japana country known for some of the strictest gun control laws in the world.
Although Abe was no longer prime minister at the time, he remained one of the most influential figures in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which ruled Japan for much of the postwar period.
He served a total of 3,188 days in two terms before resigning in September 2020 due to health reasons. His death removed a dominant power broker from Japanese politics and led to instability in the party leadership.
In his testimony, Shan stated that his actions were Out of anger against the Unification ChurchIt is a religious organization founded in South Korea, which critics in Japan call a cult.
He told the court he decided to target Abe after seeing a video message sent by the former prime minister to a church-linked group. He said he wanted to undermine the group and draw attention to its political ties.
The assassination triggered scrutiny of the Liberal Democrats’ long-standing relationship with the church. An internal party investigation later found that more than 100 MPs had some form of contact with the group, fueling public distrust and an electoral backlash.
Shan was arrested at the scene and has been in custody since the attack.
His defense lawyers asked for a prison sentence of no more than 20 years, citing his upbringing and the influence of his mother’s involvement in a religious group.
Japan retains the death penalty for murder but rarely seeks it unless the crime involves multiple victims. In this case, prosecutors chose not to impose the death penalty despite the high-profile nature of the killing.
On July 8, 2022, Shinzo Abe was shot dead while addressing voters outside a busy train station in the western city of Nara. Television cameras captured him making two loud bangs as he raised his fist during his speech before collapsing.
Officials later said he died almost immediately. Shan was arrested at the scene, where police found a crude homemade firearm. The attack shocked a country known for its strict gun laws and low violent crime rates.
Yamama told the court he targeted the Unification Church after seeing a video message sent by Abe’s former leader to a group linked to the church. The Unification Church is a religious movement founded in South Korea in 1954 and is famous for its mass weddings.
He told the judge his aim was not personal revenge against the politician but to undermine the church he said he hated and expose its links to high-profile figures.
He also said he originally planned to attack church leaders but abandoned the idea because he was too inaccessible and instead turned his attention to Abe.
According to Japanese media reports, Yama blamed the church for his family’s financial ruin, saying his mother’s huge donations left them in trouble.
His case has drawn public attention to the children of Unification Church followers and elicited sympathy from critics of the organization. Thousands of people signed petitions calling for clemency, and care packages were sent to his relatives and the detention center where he was being held.
The assassination had far-reaching consequences beyond the courtroom. The matter triggered an investigation Exposing extensive contacts between the Liberal Democratic Party and the churchprompting the party to publicly distance itself.
The review also led authorities to strip the church’s Japanese branch of its tax-exempt religious status and order its dissolution.
Separately, the government moved to tighten rules on aggressive donations to religious and other groups, and police stepped up security for politicians and other dignitaries in response to the vulnerabilities exposed by the killings.