New Delhi: While the confounding mystery of the assassination of former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe, 67, on Friday morning at about 11:30 AM in Nara, a city in south Japan, is expected to be resolved soon, several pieces to the puzzle do not quite add up.
While preliminary reports identify the assassin to be Tetsuya Yamagami, a resident of Nara who left active service in Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force in 2005, how the former Navy man came to within metres of Abe, and acquired space for two clean and clear gun shots at the former PM’s neck—just 5 cm apart—is easily the stuff of the worst security nightmares.
This is beside the fact that the assassin had either prepared well or is a very good shot with a crude weapon that police is not very sure about. The medium-height assassin has been photographed in several pictures just before the incident dressed in a grey-T-shirt, khaki cargos and a cross-shouldered black bag that possibly holstered the weapon.
The former PM, although he resigned on health grounds in 2020, clearing the way for his close aide Yoshihide Suga, was still considered to be among the most powerful and influential leaders in Japan, and would have had several layers of security ensuring his personal safety.
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Although Japan has very stringent gun control laws, the fact that Yamagami arranged or assembled a handmade double-barrel gun and cartridges without coming to anyone’s notice is quite surprising in a country where law enforcement is among the world’s best that has contributed to a near crime-free society.
That it was a carefully-planned attack is also evident from the fact that police have reportedly recovered several “possible explosive devices” during a search of Yamagami’s place of stay in Nara. Abe, from the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is credited with effecting a Right turn to Japan’s traditionally Left of centre policies. He steered the country from a long-held pacifist policy to a more militaristic policy of forceful assertion.
Teaming very closely with the US to counter an increasingly belligerent China, Abe’s detractors have often slammed him, among other things, for allying with the US, the country that nuked Japan during the Second World War in 1945 which killed about 3,55,000 people and also for pressing for a policy to re-militarise Japan.
But according to local media reports, the assassin made no attempt to run or escape and is reported to have told the police that Abe’s political ideology and policies did not mean much to him. That only adds another layer to the puzzle that the assassination has become.
