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
Mexico Arrests CJNG Leader “El Jardinero” in Nayarit
Mexican authorities arrested Audias Flores, known as “El Jardinero,” on Monday during a naval operation in the western state of Nayarit, delivering another major blow to the Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG).
Flores was considered one of the top regional leaders within the cartel and had reportedly overseen criminal operations along Mexico’s Pacific coast. Security analysts viewed him as a potential successor to slain drug kingpin Nemesio Oseguera.
The arrest was carried out by Mexico’s Navy Special Forces in a planned operation, according to Security Minister Omar García Harfuch.
The United States Department of the Treasury had previously identified Flores as a “significant foreign narcotics trafficker,” while U.S. authorities offered a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to his capture and extradition.
A U.S. grand jury indicted Flores in 2021 on charges including conspiracy to distribute cocaine and heroin.
His capture comes months after the reported death of “El Mencho,” an operation that Mexican authorities considered a priority due to the cartel leader’s alleged involvement in a 2020 assassination attempt against García Harfuch.
International
Suspect Armed With Shotgun and Knives Detained at White House Correspondents Dinner
U.S. authorities confirmed Saturday that the suspect who stormed into the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner while President Donald Trump was attending acted alone, adding that there is no ongoing threat to the public following the incident, which left one Secret Service agent injured.
Acting Metropolitan Police Department chief Jeff Carroll said during a press conference that the suspect was carrying “a shotgun, a handgun, and multiple knives” when he attempted to pass through a Secret Service security checkpoint inside the hotel lobby at approximately 8:36 p.m. local time.
“At this point, everything indicates that this was a lone actor, a lone gunman,” Carroll stated, adding that investigators have found no preliminary evidence suggesting the involvement of additional suspects.
During the exchange of gunfire inside the hotel corridors, the suspect was not struck by bullets but was subdued by law enforcement officers and later transported to a hospital for medical evaluation.
A member of the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division was shot during the incident, though the bullet was stopped by the officer’s ballistic vest, preventing serious injuries. The agent was taken to a hospital and is reportedly “in good spirits,” according to Carroll.
The shooting prompted the immediate evacuation of President Trump, Melania Trump, and several senior officials attending the event after multiple gunshots were heard outside the hotel’s main ballroom.
International
U.S. allows Venezuela to fund Maduro and Cilia Flores’ legal defense
Until now, the U.S. administration had blocked the Venezuelan government from covering the legal fees of Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, who is also jailed and facing drug trafficking charges, due to international sanctions imposed on Venezuela.
The couple’s legal team had relied on that argument in an attempt to have the indictment dismissed, claiming that preventing a defendant from accessing counsel of their choice violates rights guaranteed under the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
However, the U.S. Treasury Department will now allow “defense attorneys to receive payments from the Government of Venezuela under certain conditions,” New York prosecutor Jay Clayton wrote in a letter dated Friday to Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who is overseeing the case.
According to the letter, the funds must have become available after March 5, 2026, and cannot come from Venezuelan oil sales regulated in the United States.
Since Maduro’s removal from power in early January, former Vice President Delcy Rodríguez has served as Venezuela’s interim leader.
The United States effectively controls Venezuelan crude exports, with revenues deposited into special accounts supervised by Washington.
Court documents filed on Friday show that the defense acknowledged the sanctions exemption and, for now, withdrew its motion seeking dismissal of the charges.
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