‘This is the beginning': 91-year-old sister of longest death row inmate sees hope in his acquittal

HAMAMATSU, Japan (AP) — Hideko Hakamada, 91, spent much of her life working to free her brother from nearly a half-century on death row. Now that he has been acquitted she feels that the siblings are beginning a new chapter of their lives.

She backed her brother, Iwao Hakamada, the world’s longest-serving death row inmate, through decades of frustrating, at times apparently hopeless, legal wrangling as his mental condition worsened.

“No matter what people said about me, I lived my own life and appreciated my freedom. I did not belittle myself as the sister of a death row inmate. I lived without shame,” she told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview at her home in the central Japanese city of Hamamatsu. “My little brother only happened to be a death row inmate.”

While working as an accountant to support herself, she helped cover her brother’s legal costs, made regular long trips to Tokyo to see him on death row and helped shape public opinion in his favor.

It wasn’t easy, and there were times she felt helpless.

“I was desperately working to win him a retrial, because that was the only way to save his life,” she said. But sometimes she felt “at a loss and even unsure who I should be fighting against. … It was like I was fighting against an invisible power.”

To maintain a sense of herself, outside of her brother’s legal fight, she invested her savings and took out loans to have a building constructed. She now rents out apartments in the building, where the siblings live.

Iwao Hakamada, a former boxer, was acquitted in September by the Shizuoka District Court, which said police and prosecutors had collaborated to fabricate and plant evidence against him, and forced him to confess with violent, hourslong, closed