FILE - Tetsuya Yamagami, the alleged assassin of Japan's former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, gets out of a police station in Nara, western Japan, on July 10, 2022, on his way to local prosecutors' office. (Nobuki Ito/Kyodo News via AP, File)
Journalists crowd as a vehicle which is belived to be carrying Tetsuya Yamagami, the accused killer of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, leaves a detention center in Osaka, western Japan for a trial Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025. (Kyodo News via AP)
Journalists crowd as a vehicle which is belived to be carrying Tetsuya Yamagami, the accused killer of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, arrives for a trial at the Nara District Court in Nara, western Japan Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025. (Shohei Miyano/Kyodo News via AP)
TOKYO (AP) — The trial of the accused killer of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe began Tuesday.
Tetsuya Yamagami, 45, appeared in court as for talks with new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. Takaichi, a conservative protege of Abe, highlighted their close ties in a meeting Tuesday with Trump, who called Abe a "great friend."
Broadcaster NHK said Yamagami pleaded guilty to the charges read by prosecutors. He appeared in a black top and gray trousers, with his long hair tied in a ponytail.
Yamagami allegedly shot Abe in 2022 with a homemade firearm during an election speech because of a grudge against the controversial , which he believed had close ties to Abe and other Japanese politicians. He has told officials that massive donations his mother made to the church, which was founded in South Korea a year after the Korean War ended in 1953, caused his family's financial collapse.
Abe, Japan's longest-serving prime minister since World War II, is regularly mentioned by both and Takaichi.
The trial in the western city of Nara is set to finish in mid-December, Kyodo news agency reported.
The Unification Church, which has powerful political connections around the world, has faced hundreds of lawsuits in Japan from families who say that it manipulated members into draining their savings to make donations. For decades, however, it largely escaped official scrutiny and maintained close links with the governing Liberal Democratic Party.
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