TOKYO: The suspect in the fatal shooting of former Prime Minister ABE Shinzo suggested his attack plan in a letter he sent ahead of the incident to a blogger critical of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, better known as the Unification Church, it was learned Sunday.

According to the blogger, a man in the Chugoku region in western Japan, the letter showed the suspect’s grudge against the Unification Church while regarding Abe as “one of the most influential sympathizers” of the religious group.

The letter was delivered to an address stated on the blog. From the postmark, it is apparent that the suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, sent the letter from the western city of Okayama on July 7.

It has been learned that Yamagami visited the venue of a speech by Abe in the city on that day but decided not to carry out an attack at the time.

The following day, Yamagami fired his apparent homemade gun at Abe while the former prime minister was giving a campaign speech in the western city of Nara ahead of the July 10 House of Councillors election.

In the letter sent in advance of the attack, Yamagami said his grudge against the Unification Church dates back 30 years, noting that his family collapsed after his mother became a follower of the church, spending over 100 million yen in donations to the church and going bankrupt.

The letter included a copy of a document exchanged between a relative of his family and the religious group, according to the blogger.

Yamagami said in the letter that he was “diligently crafting guns.” He also said that he wanted the family of the religious group’s founder to die, but that it was difficult to realize that.

Yamagami described Abe as not a direct enemy but as “merely one of the Unification Church’s most influential sympathizers in the real world,” while noting that he was feeling bitter about the former Japanese leader.

He added that he “cannot afford to think about the political consequences of Abe’s death.”

The content of the letter generally matches the suspect’s leaked statements during the investigation by the police department of Nara Prefecture. He has told the police that he initially targeted the religious group’s head but the group head did not come to Japan due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The blogger who received the letter from Yamagami told Jiji Press that Yamagami, who revealed in the letter that he was a reader of the blog, may have wanted to have someone know his thoughts before carrying out the shooting attack. “I wish he had come and meet me before the incident,” the blogger said.

JIJI Press