International
Who is Iwao Hakamada, the inmate acquitted after 47 years waiting for a death sentence?
Former professional boxer, converted to Christianity in prison, Iwao Hakamada spent 47 years behing bars waiting for a death sentence that never came and from which the Japanese justice acquitted him this Thursday. It was the end of a tireless struggle to defend his innocence.
Hakamada (Shizuoka, 1936) was sentenced to death in 1968 after being accused of murdering two years earlier the owner of the miso factory (fermented soy) in which he worked, his wife and the couple’s two children and then burning his house.
He tirelessly defended his innocence on the grounds that the evidence that incriminated him was actually manufactured against him, mainly garments found in one of the company’s miso tanks, stained with blood and that matched his DNA. The Japanese justice has finally proved him right.
At 88 years old, with a weakened mental condition due to the almost half century he spent bands (so he holds a Guinness record), the Shizuoka District Court acquitted him this Thursday after the repetition of his trial, a procedure uncommon in Japan, but accepted for Hakamada in 2014.
The former Japanese boxer was released that year from prison, but the magistrates exempted him from appearing in the new trial due to his impaired mental condition. His sister, Hideko Hakamada, and his lawyer, Hideyo Ogawa, two of the pillars of the former convice, took over.
19 days and 228 hours of interrogation
Although he denied the facts when he was arrested in 1966, Hakamada took the charges on September 6 of the same year to “protect his life,” as he said at the time, on the nineteenth day of an interrogation that lasted an average of 12 hours a day.
He again denied having committed the crime in the first hearing of the initial trial and continued to do so in the thousand letters he sent to his family from prison.
The first was written in 1967 and was addressed to his mother, who died the following year although he did not know it until months later.
“It’s been half a year since I last saw you. I’m fine. I’m sorry my family is worried about me. I really have nothing to do with the Kogane Miso incident. I am innocent,” read the manuscript, compiled and published by the Japanese newspaper Asahi, along with the hundreds of letters that happened to the first one.
“They looked a little like my clothes, but there are so many clothes in the world that look like…”, Hakamada wrote before being sentenced in relation to the garments found in the miso tank.
Capital penalty
Hakamada was sentenced to death penalty because the blood with which the clothes found immersed in miso were stained matched his DNA, but the Japanese defended from the beginning that it was a fabricated evidence against him and appealed the sentence.
“I saw them (the blood-stained pants) in court. They seemed too small to me, no matter how I looked at them. If they don’t go well for me, the accusation against me will disappear,” Hakamada wrote in another of the letters to his family.
It was shown that the pants did not correspond to the size of the ex-contain, but the prosecutors and the authorities in charge of the investigation of the case argued that the clothes were small because Hakamada gained weight in prison.
Another of the former boxer’s arguments in the defense of his innocence was that the color of the blood was too dark, a thesis that prosecutors and investigators refuted claiming that the red had acquired a brownish tone by soaking the clothes in miso.
The appeal was rejected, but Hakamada requested in 1981 the repetition of the trial of his case, which was not accepted until 2014, after the prosecution revealed color photographs of the clothing that made the Shizuoka Court doubt the veracity of the evidence due to the color of the blood.
Hakamada’s release was ordered by the Japanese justice 17,388 days after his arrest, when a second trial was accepted, and the Japanese was released from prison at the age of 78.
A life in freedom with his sister
At the current age of 88, Hakamada lives in Hamamatsu, a city located in Shizuoka Prefecture, southwest of Tokyo, with his sister Hideko, three years older than him.
He continues to show symptoms of the “institutional psychosis” that was diagnosed in 2008, a mental illness that some prisoners develop and that manifests itself in the form of dizziness, headaches, nausea and paranoia. He also claims to be God.
International
Peru opens new probe into ex-president Humala over killings and forced disappearances
Peru’s Public Prosecutor’s Office has opened a new preliminary investigation against former President Ollanta Humala (2011–2016) and four other former military officers for the alleged killing of two people and the forced disappearance of four others during the 1990s, when Humala served as the head of the Madre Mía military base amid the country’s internal armed conflict, a local media outlet reported on Monday (Nov. 10, 2025).
The First Supraprovincial Criminal Prosecutor’s Office Specialized in Human Rights and Counterterrorism in Lima has formalized the investigation, which targets Humala — currently serving a 15-year sentence for money laundering related to illicit campaign financing — as well as former Army noncommissioned officer Amilcar Gómez and three additional ex-soldiers. They are accused of alleged crimes against humanity.
According to Radio RPP, citing a resolution dated October 28, the case concerns the aggravated homicide of Edgardo Isla Pérez and Nemer Acuña Silva, and the alleged forced disappearance of Luis Alberto Izaguirre Prieto, Nelson Hoyos Sagastegui, Hermes Estela Vásquez, and Yandel Leandro Zúñiga.
Prosecutors have classified the investigation as complex, setting a deadline of May 24, 2026.
Judge Jorge Chávez Tamariz has ordered that the suspects be listed in the National Registry of Individuals Prosecuted for the Crime of Forced Disappearance and has imposed standard reporting requirements while the inquiry continues.
International
Record cold wave freezes Eastern U.S., iguanas falling from trees in Florida
A severe cold wave is gripping two-thirds of the eastern United States, with record-low temperatures reported in Florida — where iguanas are literally falling frozen from trees — the National Weather Service (NWS) warned on Monday.
The agency noted that both high and low temperatures are running between 20 and 30 degrees Fahrenheit below seasonal averages, equivalent to about -6°C to -1°C. The unusual drop has caused many areas across the Southeast to match or break historic cold records.
According to the NWS, the cause is a “frigid continental polar air mass” continuing its push southward following a polar front. This system has brought snow, strong winds, and dangerous cold conditions from the Great Lakes to New England and the Appalachian Mountains.
As a precaution, authorities have issued freeze alerts stretching from the lower Mississippi Valley to the coastal plain of Virginia, where snowfall estimates range from 4 to 8 additional inches on top of what has already accumulated in recent days.
International
U.S. Senate holds emergency session as shutdown threatens economy
The U.S. Senate is convening on Sunday in an extraordinary session to try to put an end to the 39-day government shutdown, which threatens to shrink GDP in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to Kevin Hassett, Director of the White House National Economic Council.
In an interview with CBS, Hassett noted that U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs had previously estimated that the partial shutdown would cost the country around 1.5% of GDP. However, he warned that “this figure will likely fall short” if the impasse continues “for a couple more weeks.” The suspension of flights due to a shortage of air traffic controllers and major disruptions in food assistance distribution are among the difficulties the government is facing as operations stall over disagreements between Democrats and Republicans, including on healthcare spending.
Throughout Sunday, Donald Trump has continued to blame former President Barack Obama’s healthcare plan and the pandemic-era subsidies paid to insurance companies. On Friday, Democrats proposed reopening the government in exchange for a one-year extension of medical tax credits — an offer quickly rejected by Republicans.
“The Obamacare scam directly benefits their allies in the insurance industry. They are getting richer at the expense of the American people, while healthcare coverage worsens. If Democrats get their way again, they will score yet another big win at the people’s expense,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
As he did on Saturday, Trump has demanded that Senate Republicans redirect subsidies directly to U.S. citizens. “Republicans should allocate these funds straight into their health savings accounts,” he argued.
Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune announced Sunday that the chamber will remain in session until the government reopens in what is expected to be a marathon negotiation.
Senators are working on the final version of a package of three long-term appropriations bills that form part of the Republican plan to break the deadlock. Thune is pushing a strategy that would start by approving the temporary funding resolution previously passed by the House of Representatives and amending it to include the appropriations package — known as a “minibus” — with the ultimate goal of extending funding for a longer term.
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