NARA, Japan, Jan 21, 2026 (BSS/AFP) - The gunman charged with killing 
Japan's former prime minister Shinzo Abe was found guilty Wednesday and 
jailed for life, as the judge declared the broad-daylight assassination 
"despicable and extremely malicious".

The shooting more than three years ago forced a reckoning in a country with 
little experience of gun violence, and ignited scrutiny of alleged ties 
between prominent conservative lawmakers and a secretive sect, the 
Unification Church.

As he handed down the sentence at a court in the city of Nara, judge Shinichi 
Tanaka said Tetsuya Yamagami, 45, had been "determined" to shoot Abe.

The fact he "shot him from behind and did so when (Abe) was least expecting 
it" points to the "despicable and extremely malicious" nature of his act, he 
said.

Yamagami looked down and expressed little emotion during the sentencing for 
charges including murder and firearms control law violations, after he used a 
handmade gun to kill Japan's longest-serving leader during a campaign speech 
in July 2022.

The defence team of Yamagami -- who had admitted to murder at the trial 
opening in October -- told a press conference they had not yet decided 
whether to appeal, which under Japan's legal system must be done within two 
weeks.

In a statement to Japanese media, Abe's widow Akie urged Yamagami to "face up 
to what he has done and pay for the crime of taking the life of my precious 
husband".

- 'Significant grief' -

Prosecutors had argued that the defendant's motive to kill Abe was rooted in 
his desire to besmirch the Unification Church.

The months-long trial highlighted how his mother's blind donations to the 
church plunged his family into bankruptcy and how he came to believe 
"influential politicians" were helping the sect thrive.

Abe had spoken at events organised by some of the church's groups.

Judge Tanaka said "it is undeniable that the defendant's upbringing 
influenced the formation of his personality and his mindset... and that it 
even played a distant role" in his actions.

But "each criminal action he took was based on nothing but his own decision-
making, the process of which deserves strong condemnation", he added.

Katsuya Nakatani, a 60-year-old member of the public who was in the 
courtroom, said the judge had convinced him that "even if there was room for 
extenuating circumstances... opening fire with so many people around is, 
after all, something that cannot be forgiven".

"I even began to think it might have been a stroke of luck that only one 
person died," he said.

Another man outside the court held a banner urging the judge to take 
Yamagami's difficult life circumstances "into the fullest consideration".

- Draw attention -

Yamagami "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 told a district court in western Japan's Nara 
region in October.

The Unification Church was established in South Korea in 1954, with its 
members nicknamed "Moonies" after founder Sun Myung Moon.

In a plea for leniency, his defence team stressed his upbringing had been 
mired in "religious abuse" stemming from his mother's extreme faith in the 
Unification Church.

In despair after the suicide of her husband -- and with her other son gravely 
ill -- Yamagami's mother poured all her assets into the Church to "salvage" 
her family, Yamagami's lawyer said, adding that her donations eventually 
snowballed to around 100 million yen ($1 million at the time).

Yamagami was forced to give up pursuing higher education. In 2005, he 
attempted to take his own life before his brother died by suicide.

The defence team's Kohei Matsumoto called it "regrettable" that the court 
dismissed their claim that tragic events in Yamagami's adulthood "form a 
continuous sequence" from his upbringing and "are directly connected to his 
motive for the crime".

Investigations after Abe's murder led to cascading revelations about close 
ties between the Church and many conservative lawmakers in the ruling Liberal 
Democratic Party, prompting four ministers to resign.

In 2020, Yamagami began hand-crafting a firearm, a process that involved 
meticulous test-firing sessions in a remote mountainous area.

This points to the highly "premeditated" nature of his attack on Abe, 
prosecutors said.

The assassination was also a wake-up call for a nation which has some of the 
world's strictest gun controls.

Gun violence is so rare in Japan that security officials at the scene failed 
to immediately identify the sound made by the first shot, and came to Abe's 
rescue too late, a police report after the attack said.

The Japanese version of life imprisonment leaves open the possibility of 
parole, although in reality, experts say many die while incarcerated.