Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s alleged shooter, Tetsuya Yamagami, told the police that he was motivated by Abe’s connections to the messianic new religious movement known as the Unification Church.
Yamagami explained that his mother had made a “huge donation” to the group, and he blamed the church for bankrupting his mother and ruining his family. In a press conference on July 11, 2022, the president of the Unification Church’s Japanese branch confirmed that Yamagami’s mother was a member, though the suspected killer and Abe were not.
