TOKYO: A man from Japan wrongly convicted of murder who was the world's longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded $1.4 million in compensation, an official said Tuesday.
For each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, the payout represents 12,500 yen ($83), most of it on death row when each day could have been his last.
The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others.
The Shizuoka District Court, in a decision dated Monday, said that "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.
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