Tokyo: Tetsuya Yamagami, the man who fatally shot former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022, filed an appeal on Wednesday against his life sentence.
The Nara District Court on January 21 handed down a life sentence to Yamagami, 45, who was convicted of murder and other charges for shooting Abe with a homemade gun in July 2022 while the former leader was delivering a campaign speech on a street in Nara.
The ruling rejected the defence counsel’s argument that his unfavorable upbringing should be considered in determining his sentence.
Masaaki Furukawa, one of Yamagami’s lawyers, said the decision to appeal was made after consultations with the defendant to seek a review and possible correction of the initial ruling, the Asahi Shimbun reported.
Wednesday was the deadline for him to file an appeal against the January 21 ruling by the Nara court. Yamagami agreed to appeal after strong persuasion from his lawyers, domestic media reported, quoting informed sources.
Yamagami had earlier admitted to murdering Abe during his trial at the Nara District Court, saying that he committed the crime due to a grudge he held against the Unification Church because his family suffered financial ruin due to his mother’s large donations to the religious group, which he believed had close ties to Abe and other Japanese politicians.
Yamagami’s defence had called for a prison term of no more than 20 years, arguing that he was a victim of a religious group’s harm and that his ‘tragic’ upbringing motivated him to kill Abe, Xinhua news agency reported.
The court, however, maintained that while his upbringing involved significant hardship, it did not justify a substantial reduction in sentence.
The life sentence was in line with what prosecutors had requested. The defence team, which did not contest the basic facts surrounding the murder that took place in broad daylight, had asked that Yamagami’s sentence be capped at 20 years or less, saying their client deserved a chance to make a fresh start in society.
(IANS)
