The man arrested this Friday by Japanese police on suspicion of attempted murder of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is a former member of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, the equivalent of a country’s armed forces. Tetsuya Yamagami, a 41-year-old unemployed man from the city of Nara, was arrested while holding the weapon with which he would have shot the former Japanese president twice.
The agents have also proceeded to search his home. According to the public broadcaster NHK, the attacker shot Abe in the back. His gun was homemade. Sources from the Japanese Ministry of Defense assure that the alleged aggressor worked in the naval branch of the Self-Defense Forces, in charge of the defense of the archipelago, for three years, until 2005.
The motives for the attack have not yet been clarified. Yamagami would have underlined in his statements to the police that he was “dissatisfied” with the former president and that is why “he went to kill him,” according to police sources cited by the local press.
Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, 67, has died after being shot several times in the middle of the street while participating in a campaign rally in Nara. The former Japanese chief executive, who ruled between 2012 and September 2020, before leaving power for health reasons, was giving a speech at a rally outside a train station in the former Japanese capital as part of the campaign for upper house elections scheduled for Sunday. Shortly after he began to speak, around 11:30 local time (04:30 Spanish peninsular time), he was hit by at least two shots and immediately transferred to Kashihara hospital in cardiorespiratory arrest.
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