The man who killed former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with a homemade gun was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday, public broadcaster NHK reported.
The verdict ended a years-long trial over the assassination, which shocked Japan, where gun violence is rare, and spotlighted an influential religious sect.
In 2022, Tetsuya Yamagami shot and killed former Prime Minister in broad daylight with a gun he had made himself at his home while he was giving a campaign speech on the streets of western Nara City.
Prime Minister Abe resigned as prime minister in 2020 due to health reasons. However, he remained politically active and wielded tremendous influence as Japan’s longest-serving prime minister.
Yamagami, now 45, was arrested at the scene and charged with murder and firearms charges the following year.
In sentencing, Judge Shinichi Tanaka criticized the planned nature of the crime.
“It was a cowardly act for the perpetrator to seize an opportunity and take advantage of the opportunity to aim the gun at the victim,” he said.
“Needless to say, the outcome was tragic. The victim’s wife was forced to face his sudden death and continues to struggle with a deep sense of loss,” he added, referring to Prime Minister Abe’s widow Akie.
He also said Yamagami had committed an “extremely dangerous and malicious act” by using a gun in front of a crowd.
Hundreds of people lined up outside the Nara courthouse for a chance to watch the trial, and officials relied on a lottery to allocate the limited seats.
Considered Japan’s last period of political stability, Abe served as prime minister from 2006 to 2007 and from 2012 to 2020. During his two terms, he transformed Japan’s security posture, challenging its status as a pacifist nation and passing major security legislation in 2015 that expanded what Japan could do militarily to support the United States.
He was also a prominent figure on the world stage, fostering strong ties with the US government and seeking to improve relations with Beijing while uniting Pacific allies to counter Chinese expansion in the region.
His killing shocked Japan, a country with one of the lowest gun crime rates in the world thanks to strict firearms laws.
Since his resignation, the country’s political situation has been in turmoil, with a revolving door of different leaders. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled Japan almost continuously for the past 30 years, has fallen into crisis as it faces fallout from slush fund scandals, soaring inflation and a shift to the right in politics across the country.
Sanae Takaichi, the current prime minister and Abe’s protégé, has conducted a mass poll next month to capitalize on his rising popularity while hoping to rebuild the Liberal Democratic Party’s brand.
This murder also brought scrutiny to the relationship between the Liberal Democratic Party and the Unification Church. Yamagami accuses the cult of bankrupting his family through excessive donations from his mother, a believer. He had claimed that he targeted Abe because he believed the former leader had ties to a church that originated in South Korea.
A subsequent government investigation found that the group had violated Japanese regulations by allegedly forcing members to make exorbitant donations, and a court ordered the church to disband in March last year. The sect is appealing this decision.
The Unification Church, officially known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, emerged in the late 1950s and became a worldwide organization by the 1980s.
Mass weddings, where thousands of couples get married at the same time, continue to make international headlines.
The Liberal Democratic Party is shouldering much of the public backlash after a survey found that more than half of its members have ties to the church. Several senior officials, including a former defense minister, said they had received support from church members in past elections.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida subsequently promised to purge these officials and sever ties between the party and the group, but the damage was done and the public’s deep suspicions about the Liberal Democratic Party grew. Voters clearly rebuked him at the polls, handing seats in the Diet to the opposition party and stripping the Liberal Democratic Party of its majority.
According to Reuters, the prosecution at Yamagami’s trial called for a life sentence, calling the assassination an “extremely serious incident with no precedent in post-war history.” His lawyer argued for a more lenient sentence, pointing to the harm inflicted on his family by the Unification Church.
