Photo/Illutration A tweet posted on Oct. 14, 2019, on a Twitter account believed to belong to Tetsuya Yamagami says: “The only thing I hate is the Unification Church. I have no concern about what will happen to the Abe administration as a result.” (Yusuke Morishita)

The suspected murderer of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had uploaded messages about his hatred of the Unification Church and his willingness to die to free members of the religious group, sources said.

Tetsuya Yamagami,41, told investigators that he bore a deep grudge against the Unification Church, formally known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, because his mother’s large donations to the group ruined his family financially.

Yamagami’s Twitter username appeared in a letter that he wrote before Abe was shot and killed in Nara on July 8, the sources said. Nara prefectural police have confiscated the letter that was sent to a freelance writer in Shimane Prefecture whose blog criticized the Unification Church.

According to the sources, Yamagami tweeted on his account on Oct. 14, 2019: “The only thing I hate is the Unification Church. I have no concern about what will happen to the Abe administration as a result.”

In another tweet dated Feb. 28, 2021, the suspect wrote that Abe’s grandfather, former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, had ties with the Unification Church.

“It wouldn’t be surprising if Abe inherited (Kishi’s) DNA of being lawless,” the tweet said.

According to investigative sources, Yamagami believed Kishi (1896-1987) allowed the Unification Church to set up a branch in Japan.

The suspect’s tweets also showed details of his upbringing and family life.

“My late father graduated from Kyoto University. His older brother is a lawyer. My mother graduated from Osaka City University and became a nutritionist. My aunt on my mother’s side was a doctor. In an environment like this, I grew up as a model student,” he tweeted on Dec. 7, 2019.

But in another tweet posted on the same day, he revealed the struggles of a tough childhood.

“Among us three children, my older brother underwent surgery to open a hole in his skull just after he was born. When he was around 10 years old, he lost his sight in one eye in another operation,” he tweeted.

“My mother’s attention was always on my older brother. My younger sister didn’t know our father. I made efforts. For my mother,” the tweet said.

In a comment posted on a different online site on Sept. 8, 2020, Yamagami continued to express his loathing of the Unification Church.

“I just don’t like the Unification Church. That’s all,” he wrote.

Yamagami also expressed his willingness to die to crush the religious organization in a post uploaded on Dec. 12, 2020: “It’s impossible to destroy the present state of the Unification Church that it has built by ruining its members, unless you are at least prepared to lose your own life.”

He added, “I will risk my own life to liberate every person involved in the Unification Church.”

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