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TOKYO, July 9 (PTI) The man who shot and killed former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told police he initially planned to attack the leader of a religious group, Japanese media reported on Saturday, citing police sources.
Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, also said he held a grudge against a “specific group” — possibly a religious group — that he believed was linked to Abe, Kyodo news agency reported, citing police. Religious leaders were not mentioned in the report.
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Abe, 67, was shot in the back on Friday morning during a campaign speech near a train station in western Nara prefecture.
Yamagami was arrested at the scene where he wielded a homemade gun.
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Yamagami denies he committed the crime because he opposed Abe’s political beliefs, according to police.
He also didn’t know what he wanted to do after high school, and quit two months ago because he felt “tired,” according to The Japan Times.
Meanwhile, police raided his Nara apartment on Friday and found explosives and homemade firearms, the report said.
Yamagami, who attended a public high school in Nara prefecture, wrote in his graduation yearbook that he “did not know” what kind of person he wanted to be in the future.
He served as a maritime self-defense officer at the Kure base in Hiroshima Prefecture in 2005, according to government officials.
In 2020, he was employed by a manufacturing company in the Kansai region, but in April he told the company he wanted to quit because he was “tired” and left the following month.
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from the Syndicated News feed, the body of the content may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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