Abe assassin pleads guilty as Trump meets with Japan’s new prime minister
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The man accused of fatally shooting former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pleaded guilty Tuesday as the country’s new prime minister hosted President Donald Trump.
Tetsuya Yamagami, 45, appeared in court while Trump was in the country to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who has been described as the ideological heir to Abe, whom Trump has frequently praised. Takaichi joins the late former prime minister’s efforts to revise Japan’s pacifist constitution and increase the country’s defense capabilities.
On Monday, Trump said he had heard Takaichi was “a great ally and friend of my friend, Shinzo Abe.”
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Tetsuya Yamagami, the alleged assassin of Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, leaves a police station in Nara, western Japan, on July 10, 2022. (Nobuki Ito/Kyodo News via AP, File)
According to The Associated Press, based on broadcaster NHK, Yamagami accepted the charges read by prosecutors. Many publications reported that Yamagami was wearing a black shirt and gray pants, and that his hair was tied back.
“It’s all true. There’s no doubt that I did all this,” Yamagami said when a judge at the Nara District Court asked him to enter a plea. Japan Times reported. The source added that the suspect said he would consult his lawyers on legal matters.
The AP reported that Yamagami is accused of fatally shooting Abe with a homemade firearm while he was giving a speech out of a grudge against the controversial Unification Church, which the former prime minister believes is linked to Abe and other politicians.
While Yamagami pleaded guilty, his lawyers reportedly objected to the details of the charges against him. Japan Times reported that lawyers argued that the homemade gun he used should not have been considered a firearm under Japanese law at the time of the shooting. The law was changed after Abe’s assassination.
Yamagami allegedly told authorities that his mother made large donations to the church, which led to the family’s financial collapse, according to the AP. The Unification Church was founded in South Korea a year after the Korean War ended in 1953.
Portrait of Japan’s former prime minister Abe Shinzo on an altar installed near the spot where he was assassinated Friday in front of Yamato-Saidaiji Station, July 10, 2022, in Nara, Japan. (Jinhee Lee/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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The trial continues in the western city of Nara and will end in mid-December, AP reported, citing Kyodo news agency.
Abe was Japan’s longest-serving prime minister since World War II. When Abe was assassinated in 2022, Trump released a statement saying it was “really bad news for the world.”
Trump wrote: “Few people know what a great man and leader Shinzo Abe was, but history will teach them and be kind. He was a unequaled unifier, but above all, a man who loved and valued his great country, Japan. Shinzo Abe will be greatly missed. There will never be anyone like him.” Truth Social in 2022.
President Donald Trump listens to a speech by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe while dining at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, on April 18, 2018. (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)
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Upon his arrival in Japan on Monday, Trump was full of praise for Takaichi, 64, Japan’s first female prime minister. He came to power earlier this month following the resignation of former Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba after the Liberal Democratic Party lost its upper house majority in July.
Trump left the Japan leg of his Asia trip by signing trade and rare earth deals, ushering in what he and Takaichi say will be a “golden age” of U.S.-Japan relations. He told Takaichi that the United States would be there for “anything you want, any favor you need, anything to help Japan,” the BBC reported.
Addressing US soldiers on the USS George Washington at Japan’s Yolosuka Naval Base, Trump said that the first batch of missiles for Japan’s F-35 warplanes “will arrive this week.”
President Donald Trump, along with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, speaks with military members aboard the USS George Washington, an aircraft carrier docked at the American naval base in Yokosuka, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
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Trump praised the United States’ alliance with Japan, calling it “one of the most remarkable relationships in the entire world.”
Sharing the same stage with Trump, Takaichi said Japan was “determined to fundamentally strengthen its defense capacity” and was “ready to contribute more proactively to peace and stability in the region.”
Fox News Digital’s Efrat Lachter and Bradford Betz contributed to this report.
