Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Friday expressed “outrage and sadness” over the assassination of Japanese former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and said he had ordered three days of national mourning in Brazil.
Abe, Japan’s longest-serving leader, died on Friday hours after he was shot while campaigning for a parliamentary election in the western city of Nara.
Bolsonaro called Abe, who was 67, “a brilliant leader and a great friend of Brazil” while sharing a picture alongside him on Twitter and urging “such an unjustifiable cruelty” to be severely punished.
The Brazilian president met with Abe multiple times as he attended a G-20 summit in Osaka months after taking office in 2019 and traveled back to Japan for an official visit later that year.
“We stand with Japan,” Bolsonaro said.
Brazil is home to the world’s largest Japanese population outside Japan.
