Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s assassin has been sentenced to life imprisonment.
According to Al Jazeera, gunman named Tetsuya Yamagami who shot Abe in 2022 was handed down the life sentence on Wednesday, January 21, by Judge Shinchi Tanaka in Nara.
The 45-year-old assassin had admitted to fatally shooting Abe in 2022 in a crime that convulsed Japan, where gun violence is extremely rare.
In Japan, a sentence of life imprisonment leaves opens the possibility of parole, though experts say that many of those who receive the penalty die while incarcerated.
Prosecutors had sought a life sentence for Yamagami, calling the murder “unprecedented in our post-war history” and citing the “extremely serious consequences” it had on society.
At the opening of Yamagami’s trial in October, prosecutors argued that the accused had been motivated to kill Abe by a desire tarnish the image of the Unification Church.
He “thought if he killed someone as influential as former prime minister Abe, he could draw public attention to the Church and fuel public criticism of it,” a prosecutor said.
Yamagami’s lawyers had argued for a maximum punishment of 20 years imprisonment, citing hardship suffered by his family after his month donated her life savings to the church.
