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Exonerated prisoner awarded $1.4m after 46 years spent on death row in Japan

Iwao Hakamada, the world’s longest serving death row prisoner, had been wrongly convicted of a quadruple murder

A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded $1.4m in compensation, an official has said.

The payout represents 12,500 yen ($83) for each day of the 46 years that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last.

The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated in 2024 of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others.