Hideo Kojima To Take Legal Action After Being Misidentified As Shinzo Abe's Killer
Former Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe was assassinated yesterday. The suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami was apprehended immediately and taken into custody. Once news outlets started showing his picture in their coverage, some on the internet started joking about how he resembled Hideo Kojima. This eventually snowballed into a French politician, and even a Greek news channel mistakenly using Kojima's image as that of the assassin.
Kojima Productions has now released a statement regarding the incident on Twitter. "Kojima Productions strongly condemns the spread of fake news and rumors that convey false information. We do not tolerate such libel and will consider taking legal action in some cases."
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Far-right French politician Damien Rieu was one of the first significant people to tweet a statement on Abe's assassination, using images of Kojima. The now deleted tweet was accompanied by a caption that translates to “The extreme left kills”.
A Greek news show also used images of Kojima in their coverage of the assassination. "Tetsuya has confessed to his actions to the police, admitting that he wanted Abe dead because he was disappointed and upset with him," said the news segment. "The police have learned that [the culprit] had served in the Navy Special Forces and taught a unit in Medical School on Physiotherapy for dementia patients. He was passionate about Che Guevara."
Images of Kojima wearing or standing next to effigies of Che Guevara were used to create a narrative that Yamagami followed the ideologies of Guevara, and had a part to play in the assassination of Shinzo Abe. In truth, Yamagami's interrogation revealed that he shot Abe because he had a grudge against a
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