A man was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the attempted murder of former Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in 2023.
Ryuji Kimura, 25, launched a bomb in Kishida while the head of the country approached a crowd for an electoral event in the city of Wakayama.
Although Kishida was unscathed, the explosion of the house system caused minor injuries to a police officer and a member of the public.
The attack shocked Japan when it came less than a year after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot down during an outdoor electoral campaign.
Kimura, who was sentenced on Wednesday, said during the interrogation, his intention was not to kill Kishida, but to oppose the regulation of the country’s age of elections which prevented him from putting himself policy.
He also added that he had launched the bomb to draw attention to a civil lawsuit he brought in 2022, which was rejected.
Kimura’s defense argued that he should not face an accusation of attempted murder, because he did not expect the bomb to cause injury and that a three -year prison sentence would be reasonable Given the extent of these injuries.
However, the court said that the explosives were powerful enough to cause fatal damage.
By handing over the decision, judge President Keiko Fukushima noted that “the targeting of a Prime Minister on Service caused significant anxiety to the company as a whole”.
In addition to the attempted accusation of murder, Kimura was also found guilty of having violated the regulations of explosives and the laws on the control of firearms.
His 10 -year -old sentence is five years younger than the prosecutors had sought.
While violent attacks are extremely rare in Japan, anxiety around the security of politicians increased following the assassination of ABE in 2022.
The attempted attack on Kishida, which came less than a year later, raised questions about the reasons why there was no strict security presence in the head of the country at the time.
