Nara: Japanese prosecutors Thursday pressed additional charges against the suspect in the fatal shooting of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last July, including a violation of the ordnance manufacturing law.

The Nara District Public Prosecutors Office in western Japan indicted Tetsuya Yamagami, 42, for manufacturing guns without a permit and damaging a building housing a facility related to the religious group known as the Unification Church.

The prosecutors decided not to bring charges of violating the public offices election law by impeding free elections, as they failed to find enough evidence.

Efforts to uncover the full picture surrounding the killing of Abe, who was the longest-serving prime minister in Japan at a total of eight years and eight months, will now move to court.

According to investigative sources, Yamagami has told the Nara prefectural police that he “test-fired a handmade gun” at a Unification Church-linked facility.

Tests of six guns confiscated by police from the suspect’s home found that the weapons were lethal.

Yamagami was indicted on Jan. 13 on charges of murdering Abe and violating the firearms and swords control law.

He is suspected of shooting the former prime minister, who was giving a stump speech for a House of Councillors election campaign, near Kintetsu Railway Co.’s Yamato-Saidaiji Station in the city of Nara on July 8 last year.

Police sent papers to prosecutors on Feb. 13 this year on suspicion of violating the public offices election law and the ordnance manufacturing law.

JIJI Press