Japanese justice has decided the punishment for the man who killed former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe
The bizarre reason why the former Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, was assassinated, Photo: fanatik.ro
A Japanese court on Wednesday sentenced the man who killed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022 to life in prison, public broadcaster NHK reported, three and a half years after the incident shocked the nation.
Tetsuya Yamagami was arrested on the spot in July 2022 after fatally shooting Abe with a homemade weapon while he was giving an election speech in the western city of Nara. Abe, the longest-serving prime minister in the country's history, was 67 years old, France Presse notes.
A guilty verdict was all but certain after Yamagami admitted to killing Abe at his first hearing at the Nara District Court in October, and attention focused on the severity of the sentence.
Prosecutors last month asked for a life sentence, describing the act as “an extremely serious incident, unprecedented in post-war history”.
Although no longer Japan's leader at the time, Abe remained a powerful and influential force within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. His absence left a vacuum in the party, which has since seen two leadership races and a rapid succession of prime ministers.
Abe himself served as prime minister for a total of 3,188 days over two separate terms, resigning in September 2020 due to ill health.
His protégé, Sanae Takaichi, now leads Japan and the LDP, but the party's power has waned considerably.
Abe's assassination also exposed the close connection between his party and the Unification Church, an organization considered by many to be a cult. An internal party investigation found more than a hundred lawmakers had ties to the organization, prompting many voters to turn away from the LDP, the party that governed Japan for most of the post-war period.
Yamagami told the court that he harbored a grudge against the Unification Church after his mother's generous donation to it caused financial hardship for their family, and that he took out his anger on Abe because the former prime minister had once sent a video message to an event organized by a church-affiliated group.
Founded in South Korea in 1954, the Unification Church is famous for its mass weddings and its Japanese followers are an important source of income.
Yamagami's lawyers argued that the problems caused to the family by the donation to the Unification Church should be taken into account and that the prison sentence should be limited to a maximum of 20 years.
