Suspect 'held grudge' against Shinzo Abe over mother's bankruptcy

Nara, July 9

Advertisement

The man who killed Shinzo Abe believed the former Japanese leader was linked to a religious group he blamed for his mother’s financial ruin and spent months planning the attack with a homemade gun, the police told local media on Saturday.

Tetsuya Yamagami, an unemployed 41-year-old, was identified as the suspect after Japan’s longest-serving PM was shot from behind.

The suspect was seen stepping into the road behind Abe, who was standing on a platform at an intersection, before firing two shots from a 40-cm-long weapon wrapped with a black tape. He was tackled by the police at the scene.

Yamagami was a loner who did not reply when spoken to, neighbours said. He believed Abe had promoted a religious group that his mother went bankrupt donating to, Kyodo news agency said, citing investigative sources.

“My mother got involved with a religious group and I resented it,” Kyodo and other domestic media quoted him as telling the police. However, the Nara police declined to comment on it. Media have not named the religious group he was reportedly upset with.

Yamagami assembled the weapon from parts bought online, spending months plotting the attack, even attending other Abe campaign events, including one a day earlier some 200 km away, media said.

He had considered a bomb attack before opting for a gun, according to NHK, a public broadcaster.

The suspect told the police he made guns by wrapping steel pipes together with a tape, some of them even with five or six pipes, with the parts he bought online, NHK said.

The police found bullet holes in a sign attached to a campaign van near the site of the shooting and believe these were from Yamagami’s gun.

A spokesman for Japan’s navy said a person named Tetsuya Yamagami served in the Maritime Self-Defence Force from 2002 to 2005.

He declined to confirm whether the person was the suspected killer. “Yamagami joined a training unit in Sasebo, a major navy base in the southwest, and was assigned to a destroyer artillery section,” he said. “During their service, members of the Self-Defence Force train with live ammunition once a year. They also do maintenance of guns,” an officer said. — Reuters