Japan Court Awards Ksh188 Million to Longest-Serving Inmate

Iwao Hakamada, a Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder, has been awarded Ksh188 million in compensation after a court ruling.

89-year-old Iwao Hakamada, who was on the world’s longest-serving death row inmate, was found guilty of killing his boss, his boss’s wife, and their two children in 1968.

The compensation will represent Ksh10,000 for each day of the 46 years Iwao Hakamada spent in detention.

Judge Koshi Kunii said the court acknowledged multiple fabrications of evidence and that Iwao was not the culprit.

Additionally, the judge added that Iwao had suffered inhumane interrogation that resulted in mental torture during his years in jail.

The same court ruled in September 2024 that Hakamada was not guilty in a retrial, adding that police had tampered with evidence.

Iwao Hakamada Trial

The former boxer was found guilty after the investigators found a set of blood-stained clothes in a tank of miso- fermented soybean paste – a traditional Japanese seasoning and food ingredient.

The blood-stained clothes which were found a year later, were used to incriminate Iwao for a death sentence.

Despite his death sentence, he was not executed due to lengthy appeals and the retrial process.

In 2014 during his retrial, he was given a temporary release after new DNA evidence cast serious doubt on the reliability of the blood stains.

However, during the trial case, the defense accused investigators of a set-up, as the red stains on the clothes were too bright to be blood stains.

The prosecutors argued that after their experiments, the colour that showed was blood red hence credible.

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His Arrest

Hakamada was accused of the murder of his factory boss Fumio Hashiguchi and his wife, and their two teenage children.

Initially, he denied having robbed and murdered the victims but confessed following a brutal police interrogation that included beatings.

Later, he was found guilty of the crime and served 46 years before his acquittal.

Also Read: Woman Strangled to Death in Nairobi Estate as Suspects Flee Scene

Who is Hakamada Iwao?

He is a Japanese former professional boxer who was popular in Japan. However, his career was cut short after he was sentenced to death in 1968 for mass murder.

The case sparked international interest, and it was known as the Hakamada Incident.

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