A suspicious package that prompted the cancelation of a hearing for the man accused of murdering former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe contained only a petition, and no explosives, local media reported yesterday.
Tetsuya Yamagami had been due to make his first appearance before a court in Nara, Japan, on Monday, accused of shooting the former prime minister in July last year, but the session was “canceled as staff were evacuated from the building after a suspicious item was delivered to the court,” a court spokesman said.
Police were called after the object set off a metal detector, police said.
Photo: AFP
It was then moved to an open area, where bomb specialists in protective gear investigated.
“But no explosives or hazardous substances were found,” a police spokesman said, without giving further details.
Public broadcaster NHK said the box contained a printout of a Change.org petition seeking a lenient sentence for Yamagami.
The petition has amassed 13,000 signatures since last year and its organizer admitted to NHK that they had sent the document to the court.
“I sent the signatures in the hope that they would be seen by as many interested parties as possible,” the broadcaster quoted the person as saying, without identifying them. “As they were thick and it was raining, I put them in cardboard boxes... There was never any intention to obstruct justice.”
The sender contacted the police themselves after learning that the box had triggered a security alert, Kyodo news agency reported.
The court and police declined to confirm the reports.
Yamagami, 42, faces charges of murder and contravention of arms control laws, and could face the death penalty if convicted.
He reportedly targeted Abe — Japan’s best-known politician and longest-serving prime minister — over his ties to the Unification Church, the global sect whose members are sometimes referred to as “Moonies.”
The suspect is believed to have resented the church over large donations his mother made that bankrupted his family.
Details of his upbringing have stoked anger in Japan against the Unification Church and garnered Yamagami sympathy, with supporters sending him donations and signing the petition calling for leniency.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
A French-Algerian man went on trial in France on Monday for burning to death his wife in 2021, a case that shocked the public and sparked heavy criticism of police for failing to take adequate measures to protect her. Mounir Boutaa, now 48, stalked his Algerian-born wife Chahinez Daoud following their separation, and even bought a van he parked outside her house near Bordeaux in southwestern France, which he used to watch her without being detected. On May 4, 2021, he attacked her in the street, shot her in both legs, poured gasoline on her and set her on fire. A neighbor hearing
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
‘HUMAN NEGLIGENCE’: The fire is believed to have been caused by someone who was visiting an ancestral grave and accidentally started the blaze, the acting president said Deadly wildfires in South Korea worsened overnight, officials said yesterday, as dry, windy weather hampered efforts to contain one of the nation’s worst-ever fire outbreaks. More than a dozen different blazes broke out over the weekend, with Acting South Korean Interior and Safety Minister Ko Ki-dong reporting thousands of hectares burned and four people killed. “The wildfires have so far affected about 14,694 hectares, with damage continuing to grow,” Ko said. The extent of damage would make the fires collectively the third-largest in South Korea’s history. The largest was an April 2000 blaze that scorched 23,913 hectares across the east coast. More than 3,000
RSS