The trial of Shinzo Abe’s killer has highlighted the affect of an Asian mega-church
The person 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 Social gathering (LDP). Yamagami admitted to the killing in court docket final October.
The trial on the Nara District Court docket underscored ties between the LDP and the Unification Church, a strong South Korean-based non secular group based in 1954 by self-proclaimed messiah Solar Myung Moon, which critics label a money-making cult.
Media stories stated Yamagami testified he held a grudge towards 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 gaggle linked to the church.
An inside LDP investigation discovered greater than 100 lawmakers had connections to the Unification Church. Traditionally, the conservative Japanese get together and the church shared widespread floor in opposing communism and different left-wing ideologies.
After Abe’s assassination, then-Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was pressured to publicly distance the LDP from the church. Final March, the Tokyo District Court docket ordered the dissolution of the group’s Japanese department.
Whereas Abe is taken into account a divisive determine domestically, many overseas 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 Could.
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