The gunman accused of killing former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe yesterday pleaded guilty, three years after the assassination in broad daylight shocked the world.
The slaying forced a reckoning in a nation with little experience of gun violence, and ignited scrutiny of alleged ties between prominent conservative lawmakers and a secretive sect, the Unification Church.
“Everything is true,” Tetsuya Yamagami said at a court in the western city of Nara, admitting to murdering the nation’s longest-serving leader in July 2022.
Photo: AFP
The 45-year-old was led into the room by four security officials. When the judge asked him to state his name, Yamagami, who was wearing a black T-shirt and had his long hair tied at the back, replied in a barely audible voice.
However, his lawyer said they would contest certain charges, including contraventions of arms control laws for allegedly using a handmade weapon.
Yamagami’s trial had been a long time coming after the discovery of a suspicious item — later found to be harmless — caused its last-minute cancelation and the evacuation of the Nara court building in 2023.
One issue central to the case was whether extenuating circumstances applied due to “religious abuse” in Yamagami’s childhood stemming from his mother’s extreme devotion to the Unification Church, local media reported.
Yamagami reportedly resented Abe for his perceived ties to the church, which was established in South Korea in 1954 and whose members are nicknamed “Moonies” after its founder Sun Myung Moon.
The church has been accused of fomenting child neglect among its members and financially exploiting them, claims it denies.
Yamagami was said to have held a grudge against the church for bankrupting his family after his mother donated about ￥100 million (US$660,0000) as proof of her faith.
Investigations after Abe’s murder led to cascading revelations about close ties between the church and many conservative lawmakers in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, prompting four ministers to resign.
The Tokyo District Court earlier this year issued a dissolution order for the church’s Japanese arm, saying it caused “unprecedented damage” to society.
The assassination was also a wake-up call for a nation with some of the world’s strictest gun controls.
Gun violence is so rare in Japan that security officials at the scene failed to immediately identify the sound made by the first shot and came to Abe’s rescue too late, a police report after the attack said.
The debacle prompted lawmakers last year to pass a bill further strengthening arms controls to prevent people from making homemade guns.
Under the new rules, uploading tutorial videos on making firearms and propagating information about gun sales on social media can result in a fine or imprisonment of up to one year.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
IMPASSE: US President Donald Trump pressed to end the filibuster in a sign that he is unlikely to compromise despite Democrat offers for a delayed healthcare vote The US government shutdown stretched into its 40th day yesterday even as senators stayed in Washington for a grueling weekend session hoping to find an end to the funding fight that has disrupted flights nationwide, threatened food assistance for millions of Americans and left federal workers without pay. The US Senate has so far shown few signs of progress over a weekend that could be crucial for the shutdown fight. Republican leaders are hoping to hold votes on a new package of bills that would reopen the government into January while also approving full-year funding for several parts of government, but
TOWERING FIGURE: To Republicans she was emblematic of the excesses of the liberal elite, but lawmakers admired her ability to corral her caucus through difficult votes Nancy Pelosi, a towering figure in US politics, a leading foe of US President Donald Trump and the first woman to serve as US House of Representatives speaker, on Thursday announced that she would step down at the next election. Admired as a master strategist with a no-nonsense leadership style that delivered for her party, the 85-year-old Democrat shepherded historic legislation through the US Congress as she navigated a bitter partisan divide. In later years, she was a fierce adversary of Trump, twice leading his impeachment and stunning Washington in 2020 when she ripped up a copy of his speech to the
RSS