The trial of Shinzo Abe’s killer has highlighted the affect of an Asian mega-church
The man who assassinated former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022 was sentenced to life in jail on Wednesday.
Tetsuya Yamagami, 45, was arrested on the scene of the crime in Nara, the place the veteran politician and Japan’s longest-serving prime minister had been campaigning for his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Yamagami admitted to the killing in courtroom final October.
The trial on the Nara District Court underscored ties between the LDP and the Unification Church, a strong South Korean-based spiritual group based in 1954 by self-proclaimed messiah Sun Myung Moon, which critics label a money-making cult.
Media stories stated Yamagami testified he held a grudge in opposition to the church, colloquially referred to as the Moonies, after his mom donated the household’s financial savings to it. The defendant stated he focused Abe as a result of the previous prime minister had supported an occasion organized by a bunch linked to the church.
An inner LDP investigation discovered greater than 100 lawmakers had connections to the Unification Church. Historically, the conservative Japanese occasion and the church shared widespread floor in opposing communism and different left-wing ideologies.
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After Abe’s assassination, then-Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was compelled to publicly distance the LDP from the church. Last March, the Tokyo District Court ordered the dissolution of the group’s Japanese department.
While Abe is taken into account a divisive determine domestically, many international leaders credited him for expert diplomacy and a capability to forge good private connections. Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted Abe’s widow Akie on the Kremlin final May.