The day earlier than Shinzo Abe was once assassinated, Tetsuya Yamagami despatched a letter pronouncing that the Unification Church had ruined his existence, “destroying my circle of relatives and riding it into chapter 11.”
Yamagami’s mom have been a member of the church for greater than 20 years, making prodigious donations over her circle of relatives’s objections. “It’s no exaggeration to mention that my enjoy with it throughout that point continues to distort my complete existence,” he wrote to a blogger who coated the church. Eastern police have showed that he despatched the letter.
The following day, Abe was once lifeless, shot at shut vary with an improvised gun whilst campaigning within the town of Nara, Japan.
Police have charged Yamagami with homicide, pronouncing he was once offended at a “positive team” and determined to focus on Abe, the previous high minister of Japan. Government haven’t named the crowd, however a Unification Church spokesperson mentioned that Yamagami was once perhaps relating to them.
The July 8 capturing has thrust the church’s criminal troubles again into the nationwide discussion, specifically its battles with households who mentioned they’d been impoverished via massive donations. The ones bills have been amongst billions of greenbacks in income from Japan that helped finance a lot of the church’s world political and trade ambitions.
In a single judgment from 2016, a Tokyo civil court docket awarded greater than $270,000 in damages to the previous husband of a church member, after she donated his inheritance, wage and retirement finances to the crowd to “save” him and his ancestors from damnation.
In any other civil case from 2020, a pass judgement on ordered the church and different defendants to pay damages to a girl after participants had satisfied her that her kid’s most cancers was once led to via familial sins. On their recommendation, she spent tens of 1000’s of greenbacks on church items and services and products.
Final week, church officers mentioned they’d struck an settlement in 2009 with the circle of relatives of Yamagami’s mom to pay off 50 million yen (about $360,000) in donations she had made. Yamagami’s uncle mentioned she had given no less than 100 million yen.
Within the letter he despatched earlier than the capturing, Yamagami mentioned he had spent years dreaming of revenge, however had grow to be satisfied that attacking the church would accomplish not anything.
Abe is “now not my enemy,” Yamagami wrote, “he’s not anything greater than one of the most Unification Church’s maximum robust sympathisers.”