Japan’s national police chief says he will resign to take responsibility over fatal shooting of Abe

Resignation comes after police report confirms loopholes in Abe’s protection

Japan’s top police official has said he will tender his resignation taking responsibility for the security failure which led to the fatal shooting of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe last month.

Itaru Nakamura, the national police agency chief of Japan, made the announcement following the release of a report from the agency which outlined the failures in preventing the attack on 8 July.

Abe was fatally shot during a campaign speech in Nara in western Japan.

The report found loopholes in Abe’s police protection stating that a sudden change in the placement of police officers just before the former prime minister’s speech created “space” in the area behind him that was left unguarded, enabling the attacker to fire two shots from behind.

Mr Nakamura said he took the former prime minister’s death seriously and that he submitted his resignation to the National Public Safety Commission earlier on Thursday.

“In order to fundamentally re-examine guarding and never to let this happen, we need to have a new system,” Mr Nakamura told a news conference as he announced his intention to step down.

Mr Nakamura did not say when his resignation would be official. But Japanese media reported that his resignation is expected to be approved at Friday’s cabinet meeting.

The alleged gunman, Tetsuya Yamagami, was arrested at the scene and is currently under mental evaluation until late November.

Yamagami told police that he targeted Abe because of the former leader’s link to the Unification Church, which he hated.

Abe sent a video message last year to a group affiliated with the church, which experts say may have infuriated the shooting suspect.

Abe’s family paid tribute to him in a private Buddhist ritual on Thursday marking the 49th day of his assassination.

In Nara, prefectural police chief Tomoaki Onizuka also expressed his intention to step down over the assassination of the former president.

The local police has already said there were “undeniable” security flaws that led to the former prime minister’s assassination.

The church, which was founded in South Korea in 1954 and came to Japan a decade later, has built close ties with a host of conservative lawmakers, many of them members of Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party on their shared interests of anti-communism.

Since the 1980s, the church has faced accusations of problematic recruiting and religious sales in Japan, and the governing party's church ties have sent support ratings of prime minister Fumio Kishida’s cabinet into a nosedive even after its recent shuffle.

Abe was one of Japan’s most famous leaders and the longest serving prime minister. His assassination sent shock waves around the world.

Additional reporting by agencies