By Deborah Nnamdi
Iwao Hakamada, a Japanese man who was wrongfully convicted of murder and held as the world’s longest-serving death row inmate, has been granted $1.4 million in compensation, an official confirmed on Tuesday.
The payment amounts to 12,500 yen ($83) for each day of the over 40 years Hakamada spent in custody, much of it on death row, where every day could have been his last.
Now 89, Hakamada was cleared of the 1966 quadruple murder last year following a relentless campaign led by his sister and supporters.
The Shizuoka District Court, in a decision on Monday, said: “The claimant shall be granted 217,362,500 yen,” a court spokesman told AFP.
The same court ruled in September that Hakamada was not guilty in a retrial and that police had tampered with evidence.
Hakamada had suffered “inhumane interrogations meant to force a statement (confession)” that he later withdrew, the court said at the time.
The final amount is a record for compensation of this kind, local media said.
But Hakamada’s legal team has said the money falls short of the pain he suffered.
Decades of detention with the threat of execution constantly looming took a major toll on Hakamada’s mental health; his lawyers have said, describing him as “living in a world of fantasy.”
Hakamada was the fifth death row inmate granted a retrial in Japan’s post-war history. All four previous cases also resulted in exonerations.
Source: AFP
