1 Year On, No Prospects for Abe Shooting Suspect's Trial to Begin

Nara, July 8 (Jiji Press)--While Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of the fatal shooting of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, there are still no prospects for the trial of the shooting suspect to begin. The suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami, 42, has been indicted on murder and other charges. But his trial is unlikely to begin this year, observers said. According to the indictment and other sources, Yamagami allegedly murdered Abe by firing a homemade gun at him twice at close range on a street near Kintetsu Railway Co.'s Yamato-Saidaiji Station in the western city of Nara on July 8, 2022. Abe, whose tenure as prime minister of eight years and eight months was the longest in the history of Japan's constitutional government, was giving a stump speech for a House of Councillors election. The suspect is believed to have manufactured six handmade guns without permission at his home in Nara since Dec. 20, 2020. According to informed sources, Yamagami told investigators soon after the incident that he had a grudge against the religious group known as the Unification Church and targeted Abe because he believed the former prime minister had ties to the group. The Nara District Public Prosecutors Office indicted Yamagami after conducting more than five months of psychiatric evaluation and concluding that it can hold him responsible for the crime. Yamagami, now held at a detention facility in the western city of Osaka, is expected to face a lay-judge trial. As he has admitted shooting Abe, the trial is expected to focus on whether he was competent to take criminal responsibility and whether he should be given leniency. The first pretrial conference on the case was scheduled to be held at Nara District Court last month, and Yamagami was slated to attend. However, it was postponed after a suspicious object was sent to the court. A new date has not yet been set. "The first hearing of his trial is impossible this year, and seems difficult in the first half of next year," a defense lawyer said. Meanwhile, the fatal shooting of Abe has sparked controversy over the Unification Church, formally called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, and the culture ministry has exercised its right to demand reports from and put questions to the group six times since last November. The ministry is investigating whether the group's practices meet the conditions for a court to issue a dissolution order under the religious corporation law. END