Japan Court hands life sentence to Shinzo Abe’s assassin, ending landmark trial

Abdullateef Fowewe

In a verdict that caps one of Japan’s most scrutinized criminal cases, the Nara District Court on Tuesday sentenced Tetsuya Yamagami to life imprisonment for the 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The 45-year-old defendant, who pleaded guilty to murder and firearms charges when his trial began in October 2025, received the maximum penalty short of execution, as requested by prosecutors.

Yamagami shot Abe with a homemade gun during an election speech in Nara on July 8, 2022, an act that stunned the nation where gun violence and political killings are virtually unheard of.

Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister with nearly nine years in office, was a towering post-war figure whose death sparked intense scrutiny.

The court rejected Yamagami’s defense plea for leniency, which highlighted his “traumatic upbringing and grievances against the Unification Church,” an organisation he blamed for ruining his family financially.

Instead, judges branded the murder an “extremely grave act, unprecedented in post-war Japan.”

The ruling closes a chapter opened by Abe’s killing, which ignited a nationwide probe into the late leader’s ties to the controversial church.