Tetsuya Yamagami, the man tried for shooting dead former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, pleaded guilty on Tuesday, October 28 at the opening of his murder trial, three years after the events that occurred in the middle of the street, which caused shock around the world.
Tetsuya Yamagami, 45, is accused of shooting the former Japanese leader, who had left office two years ago, with a homemade weapon during an election rally on July 8, 2022 in Nara (west). He is being prosecuted for premeditated murder and violation of the gun control law. “It’s all true, I did it,” Tetsuya Yamagami said after reading the accusation, his voice barely audible.
Dressed in a black T-shirt with his long hair tied back, he had entered the Nara courtroom a few minutes earlier, handcuffed and guided by a police officer using a rope around his waist. His lawyer said he would contest some of the charges. If convicted of murder, Tetsuya Yamagami faces a lengthy prison sentence. The death penalty exists in Japan, but is most often imposed in cases involving multiple victims. The verdict is expected in January.
Tetsuya Yamagami’s resentment towards the “Moon Sect”
This tragedy caused shock in a country where gun crimes are extremely rare. The fact that the alleged murderer was angry with Shinzo Abe for his alleged links with the Unification Church, known as the “Moon sect”, also provoked an examination of the practices of this religious organization accused of exerting financial pressure on its followers, and of its links with the Japanese political world.
Founded in 1954 in South Korea by Sun Myung Moon, the organization quickly became involved in politics, and Sun Myung Moon also rubbed shoulders with foreign heads of state, such as US President Richard Nixon. The Moon sect claimed in 2012 that it had three million followers worldwide. However, according to experts, this figure would be greatly exaggerated.
Prosecutors detailed Tuesday how Tetsuya Yamagami had developed deep resentment toward the organization that he said had “determined” his life and his 2020 experiments to make a firearm from information gleaned from the internet. “He thought that by killing a figure as influential as former Prime Minister Abe, he could draw public attention to the (Unification) Church and fuel criticism of it,” a prosecutor said.
The defendant’s lawyers then recalled his family history, his father’s suicide when he was four years old, and Tetsuya Yamagami’s helplessness as his mother sank into despair, seeking solace in the Luna sect. She donated a total of almost 100 million yen (about $1 million at the time) to the organization, driving her family into ruin.
The Luna sect “wasted” its life
Tetsuya Yamagami himself tried to end his life in 2005. And the death of his brother ten years ago was recognized as suicide. “He began to think that his whole life had been wasted” by the Moon cult, one of the lawyers said.
The investigation revealed close links between the Unification Church and several elected officials of the right-wing nationalist Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in power in Japan, leading to the resignation of four ministers at the time. An internal LDP investigation showed in September 2022 that half of its then 379 elected representatives in Parliament had relations with the Unification Church. In April, a court ordered the organization’s Japanese branch to be dissolved, citing “unprecedented harm” to Japanese society.
The assassination of Shinzo Abe also highlighted the failures of the security system, as the police present did not immediately identify the sound of the first shot and intervened too late to save the former prime minister. The drama led to a reinforcement of weapons legislation in 2024. The dissemination of tutorials on their manufacture or information about their sale on social networks is punishable by one year in prison.
Source: BFM TV
