Abe Killer’s Mother to Testify in Court

Nara, Oct. 22 (Jiji Press)–The mother of Tetsuya Yamagami, indicted for killing former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with a handmade gun in Nara in 2022, will go to court as a defense witness, it was learned Wednesday. In the final pretrial arrangement proceeding held the same day, Nara District Court decided to have five witnesses testy for Yamagami, 45, and seven others for the prosecution as requested by the two sides, respectively. The first trial hearing is set to begin Tuesday, and the court is scheduled to issue a ruling on Jan. 21 next year. During the trial, Yamagami’s defense lawyers intend to seek a lighter sentence while refraining from claiming he is not guilty of the murder as they believe that sufferings brought on his family by the Unification Church triggered the crime, people familiar with the matter said. The defense witnesses include the mother, who went into personal bankruptcy after donating a total of around 100 million yen to the religious cult, his younger sister and a religion scholar well versed in the issue of massive donations to cults and their spiritual sales. Prosecutors had opposed seeking testimony from a religious scholar, calling it wrong to justify the attack by blaming religious activities. A lawmaker of the House of Councillors who was at the shooting scene and a police officer who examined Yamagami’s gun are among the prosecution witnesses, all expected to testify the wrongfulness of the crime itself. Yamagami was prosecuted for killing Abe by shooting his self-made gun twice during the former prime minister’s stump speech in the western Japan city in July 2022. The pretrial proceedings, which started in October 2023, were prolonged by defense-prosecution wranglings over whether to examine the Unification Church’s influence on the incident. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]