Alleged Abe assassin to undergo mental evaluation until Nov
Jul 25, 2022, 5:53 AM
People lay flowers during a vigil for former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Zojoji temple on July 11, 2022 in Tokyo, Japan. Abe was assassinated as he was campaigning at a rally in Nara on Friday. A suspect was apprehended and taken into custody, and confessed to shooting Abe with an improvised homemade gun. The killing of Japan's longest-serving prime minister in a country where gun violence is extremely rare has shocked the nation and the world. (Photo by Yuichi Yamazaki/Getty Images)
(Photo by Yuichi Yamazaki/Getty Images)
TOKYO (AP) — The alleged assassin of Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will be detained until late November for mental evaluation so prosecutors can determine whether to formally press charges and send him to trial for murder.
The suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami, has told police that he fatally shot Abe in July because of his links to a religious group that he hated because it bankrupted his family.
Abe’s assassination has shed a light on his and his party’s decades-long questionable links to the conservative Unification Church that Japan’s opposition said needs to be investigated further.
The church was founded in Seoul in 1954, a year after the end of the Korean War, by a self-proclaimed messiah whose teachings are backed by conservative, family-oriented values.
