Police say a 41-year-old man who used a homemade gun admitted to killing Abe.
TOKYO — One minute, Shinzo Abe, Japan’s most influential former prime minister, was stumping for a junior politician from his party near a train station in Japan’s old capital city of Nara. The next minute, Mr. Abe had collapsed and was bleeding on the street, shot twice in the neck, doctors said, by a gunman who the police said later admitted he had come to kill him.
Less than six hours later, Mr. Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister in history, was dead at age 67.
The assassination on Friday morning — in the midst of a campaign for a parliamentary election scheduled for Sunday that had been largely ignored by the public — sent shock waves across Japan, with some of the strictest gun laws in the world and a general public unaccustomed to such violent crime.
The shooting comes at a pivotal moment for Japan, as it is trying to stake out a stronger leadership position in the region in the face of mounting threats from its neighbors China and North Korea. And with images of extreme violence from Ukraine and the United States playing out on screens in Japan, the public is unsettled by the possibility that their own nation may not be as safe as they thought.
https://tnewstimes.com/2022/07/08/world/police-say-a-41-year-old-man-who-used-a-homemade-gun-admitted-to-killing-abe/
Less than six hours later, Mr. Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister in history, was dead at age 67.
The assassination on Friday morning — in the midst of a campaign for a parliamentary election scheduled for Sunday that had been largely ignored by the public — sent shock waves across Japan, with some of the strictest gun laws in the world and a general public unaccustomed to such violent crime.
The shooting comes at a pivotal moment for Japan, as it is trying to stake out a stronger leadership position in the region in the face of mounting threats from its neighbors China and North Korea. And with images of extreme violence from Ukraine and the United States playing out on screens in Japan, the public is unsettled by the possibility that their own nation may not be as safe as they thought.
https://tnewstimes.com/2022/07/08/world/police-say-a-41-year-old-man-who-used-a-homemade-gun-admitted-to-killing-abe/
