Life sentence for former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's assassin

Tetsuya Yamame himself pleaded guilty to the crime in opening the trial last year, but the penalty he deserves has shared public opinion in Japan.

While many see the 45-year-old as a cold-blooded killer, some sympathise with his troubled education, the telegram broadcasts.

Prosecutors said Yamame deserved life imprisonment for his serious “45x1>. Abbes's murder shocked the country where there is practically no armed crime.

Seeking relief, Yamame's defence team said he was the victim of “religious abuse”.

His mother's devotion to the Church of Unification bankrupted the family, and Yamamam harbored resentment over Abbes after understanding former Freedom's ties with the Controvers Church.

Nearly 700 people lined up outside the Nara District Court on Wednesday to attend the detention hearing.

Abe's shocking death as she delivered a speech in broad daylight sparked investigations into the Church of Unification and its questionable practices, including the search for financially devastating donations from her followers.

The issue also revealed ties with politicians from Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, and resulted in the resignation of several cabinet ministers.

Reporter Eito Suzuki, who covered all the Yamame court hearings except one, said Yamame and his family looked “overloaded by despair” throughout the trial.

Yamame “developed a sense of tiredness from the world and resignation”, reports Suzuki, who began investigating the Church of Unification long before Abe's shocking murder.

Everything is true. There is no doubt that I did this”, Yamame said solemnly on the first day of his trial in October 2025.

Armed with a gun made in the house mounted using two metal tubes and sticky tape, he shot twice at Abbes during a political campaign event in the western city of Nara on July 8, 2022.

The murder of Japan's best-known public figure at the time, "Abe, remains the prime minister with the longest service in Japanese history, " causing worldwide shock.

Seeking a prison sentence of no more than 20 years, Yamame's lawyers argued that he was the victim of “religious abuse”.

He hated the church because his mother gave him the assurance of his late father's life and other assets, worth 100 million yen (828,750, singapolia), the court heard.

Yamame spoke of his complaint against Abbes after seeing his video message at a church-related event in 2021 but said he had originally planned to attack church leaders, not Aben.

Suzuki recalls the faithless sight of Abe's widow Akie, when Yamame said the former leader was not his main target. Its “needs clearly embedded in my mind”, Suzuki says.

“Was my husband simply a tool used to pay back a grudge against the religious organization? Was it just so”, he added.

In an emotional statement read in court, Akie Abe said grief over the loss of her husband “will never ease”.

I only wanted him to stay alive”, she said.

Founded in South Korea, the Church of Unification entered Japan in the 1960s and cultivated ties with politicians to increase its followers, researchers say. /Periscope