Tetsuya Yamagami, suspected of killing former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is escorted by a police officer as he is taken to prosecutors, at Nara-nishi police station in Nara, western Japan on July 10, 2022. - Kyodo via Reuters
TOKYO (The Straits Times/Asia News Network): The Unification Church in Japan on Monday (July 11) said the mother of the gunman who last week assassinated former prime minister Shinzo Abe was a member of the church.
The gunman, Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, told police after the assassination that he had targeted Abe in his belief that the former PM was linked to a "religious group" that his mother had joined. Yamagami claimed that his mother paid the group exorbitant dues that left his family bankrupt and broken.
In a news conference on Monday, Reverend Tomihiro Tanaka - who leads the Japan branch of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, known as the Unification Church - said Yamagami's mother joined the church around the late 1990s.
She was still attending events about once every month and her last attendance was two months ago, he said.
The church said neither Abe nor Yamagami was a member of the church. Abe was also not an adviser to the church, the reverend added.
The church said Abe had, among other things, offered video messages to an affiliated organisation. It also acknowledged links with Abe's grandfather, the late prime minister Nobusuke Kishi.
The church said its members offered the organisation different types of donations, but that it was ultimately up to the members to decide on what or how much they wanted to donate.
It denied ever coercing members into paying any dues, and declined to comment on Yamagami's mother's donations, citing the ongoing police investigation.
The church also said it did not want to get drawn into speculation over whether it was the religious group that Yamagami had said he held a grudge against.
Abe, Japan's longest-serving prime minister, died after he was gunned down last Friday during a stump speech for a Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) candidate in the western city of Nara.
A planned Upper House election went ahead on Sunday, with the ruling LDP and coalition partner Komeito winning a convincing majority of a combined 76 seats, well above the 56 they required to retain their majority.
