08/07/2022 (Agence Europe) – “I am appalled by the tragic news that Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has passed away after succumbing a heinous attack”, said the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, on Friday 8 July. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the former Japanese leader “a wonderful person, a great democrat and a champion of the multilateral world order”. Prime Minister in 2006 and again from 2012 to 2020, Shinzo Abe was shot several times on 8 July at a campaign rally ahead of Sunday’s parliamentary elections. “May his legacy of democracy and free and open Indo-Pacific live on”, said the Lithuanian Foreign Minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis. (LM)