TOKYO — The man who fatally shot former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday, nearly four years after the assassination that stunned world leaders and upended Japanese politics.
Tetsuya Yamagami, 45, earlier pleaded guilty to killing Abe with a homemade gun at a campaign event in Nara, a city in western Japan, in 2022. The Nara District Court’s panel of judges found Yamagami guilty and on Wednesday heeded prosecutors’ request for a life sentence.
After the shooting, Yamagami told investigators his ties to the Unification Church, of which his mother was a member, led him to target Abe. Yamagami’s mother bankrupted the family through repeated donations to the church, leading his family to fall apart because of his mother’s obsession with the organization, he said.
Abe’s grandfather and former prime minister, Nobusuke Kishi, had helped the Unification Church establish its presence in Japan and Abe sent a congratulatory video message to a church event in 2021, which Yamagami said he had watched.
The ruling brings to a close a trial that gained significant public attention — not only because Japan’s strict firearms laws, which make gun violence extremely rare, but also because many Japanese people sympathized with Yamagami’s struggles with the Unification Church.
After Abe’s killing, his Liberal Democratic Party investigated party members and their support for the church, now called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.
The review found that the church had widespread ties with LDP politicians and had long engaged in inappropriate fundraising practices that targeted vulnerable people — for example, Yamagami’s mother. Many of those politicians were voted out of office in 2024. The Tokyo District Court last year ordered the dissolution of the church in Japan.
The findings outraged the Japanese public and generated sympathy for Yamagami, who received gifts and donations while in custody from people skeptical of the church.
The organization is appealing the Tokyo court’s ruling.
The church said in a statement last year that the decision to dissolve the organization was unnecessary and politically motivated. “It cannot be characterized as anything other than a ‘conclusion-driven’ decision that disregards both law and facts,” it said.
Yamagami’s trial began last October, more than three years after the assassination, following a lengthy psychiatric evaluation to find out whether he was mentally fit to stand trial.
Yamagami’s lawyers highlighted the defendant’s troubled upbringing and requested a more lenient sentence than the life term that prosecutors requested. Yamagami can appeal the ruling, but it’s unclear whether he plans to do so.
Abe was Japan’s longest-serving prime minister and his final term ended in 2020 due to illness. As leader, he sought to revitalize Japan’s stagnant economy and wanted Japan to become a more assertive and internationally engaged country, pushing the boundaries of its pacifist constitution.
He was one of the country’s most recognizable political figures and remained a staple on the campaign trail even after his resignation. He was stumping for LDP candidates in Nara when he was shot in the chest and neck.
The case was an “extremely difficult” one because Yamagami’s motives were more complicated than a straightforward, politically-motivated assassination, said Mikio Uehara, a lawyer and former prosecutor in Tokyo and Nara. “There are very few comparable precedents,” Uehara said.
The post Killer of Japanese leader Shinzo Abe sentenced to life in prison appeared first on Washington Post.
