Tokyo’s high court on Monday ordered a retrial for an 87-year-old former boxer who has been on death row for more than five decades after his murder conviction that his lawyers said was based on forced confession and fabricated evidence.
The Tokyo High Court said Iwao Hakamada deserves a retrial because of a possibility that a key evidence that led to his conviction could have been fabricated by investigators, according to a statement from the Japan Bar Association.
Amnesty International says Hakamada is the world’s longest-serving death row prisoner.
He has been temporarily released since 2014, but still not cleared of charges, when the Shizuoka District Court in central Japan suspended his execution and ordered a retrial. That ruling was overturned by the Tokyo High Court until the Supreme Court in 2020 ordered the lower court to reconsider.
His defense lawyers rushed out of the courtroom and flashed banners saying “Retrial.” “We won his retrial. I’m so glad, and that’s all I can say,” said his 90-year-old sister Hideko, who has devoted her life to prove her brother’s innocence.
Hakamada was convicted of murder in the 1966 killing of a company manager and three of his family members, and setting fire to their central Japan home, where he was a live-in employee. He was sentenced to death two years later. He initially denied the accusations then confessed, which he later said he was forced to because of violent interrogation by police.
A German appeals court on Thursday ordered a new sentencing hearing for a German convert to Islam who was given 10 years in prison on charges that, as a member of the Islamic State group in Iraq, she allowed a 5-year-old Yazidi girl she and her husband kept as a slave to die of thirst in the sun.
The 31-year-old defendant now risks a higher sentence.
The Federal Court of Justice threw out an appeal by the woman, who has been identified only as Jennifer W. in line with German privacy rules, but partly approved an appeal by prosecutors. It overturned the sentence, though not the rest of the verdict, and sent the case back to the Munich state court for a new decision.
The woman was convicted in October 2021 of, among other things, two counts of crimes against humanity through enslavement, in one case resulting in death, being an accessory to attempted murder and membership in a terrorist organization abroad.
The federal court found that Munich judges erred in sentencing the woman for a “less severe case” of crimes against humanity and overlooked aggravating circumstances. German law allows for a life sentence in cases where a defendant’s actions result in a person’s death.
A soccer club organizer and its chief of security were jailed by an Indonesian court on Thursday on charges of negligence leading to the deaths of 135 people when police fired tear gas inside a stadium last October, setting off a panicked run for the exits.
The disaster in Kanjuruhan stadium in East Java’s Malang city was among the world’s worst sporting tragedies.
The panel of three judges at Surabaya District Court, which was under heavy police guard, convicted Abdul Haris, the Arema FC Organizing Committee chair, and the club’s security chief, Suko Sutrisno, of criminal negligence causing death and bodily harm following a nearly two-month trial. About 140 witnesses testified during the trial.
Haris was sentenced to 18 months in prison and Sutrisno to 12 months, far below the more than six years sought by prosecutors for each of them.
Presiding Judge Abu Achmad Sidqi Amsya said the defendants had not verified the safety of the stadium since 2020 and “did not prepare an emergency plan.”
The crowd’s panic after the tear gas was fired caused a crush at six exits, where many fans were killed, he said.
A senior legal adviser said Thursday that UEFA rules on homegrown players are partially incompatible with the European Union’s free movement laws, although quotas might be legitimate in order to develop and recruit youngsters.
Advocate General Maciej Szpunar said UEFA-backed quotas requiring teams to register a minimum number of players to be trained locally are “likely to create indirect discrimination” against players from other EU countries.
Advocate generals routinely provide legal guidance to the European Court of Justice. Their opinions aren’t binding on the Luxembourg-based court, but are followed in most cases.
“It is a fact of life that the younger a player is, the more likely it is that that player resides in his place of origin. It is therefore necessarily players from other member states who will be adversely affected by the contested rules,” the court said in a statement. “Though neutral in wording, the contested provisions place local players at an advantage over players from other member states.”
A judge in Belgium asked the European Union’s court in Luxembourg in 2021 to examine if the rules, designed to protect young local talents, comply with free movement of labor and competition law in the 27-nation bloc.
Mexico’s president lashed out Wednesday at the chief justice of the country’s Supreme Court, accusing her of promoting rulings favorable to criminal suspects.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s comments opened a new debate over the separation of powers in Mexico, at a time when the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the president’s controversial cuts to election agency funding.
López Obrador has already attacked independent regulatory agencies, slammed the judiciary and cut funding for the National Electoral Institute.
The electoral dispute has led the president to feud with the press, demonstrators and the U.S. State Department. Opponents say the electoral cuts threaten Mexico’s democracy, and have appealed them to the Supreme Court.
López Obrador’s comments Wednesday opened a head-on conflict between the administration and Supreme Court Chief Justice Norma Piña, the first woman to hold that post.
The president was angered after a judge issued an injunction striking down an arrest warrant against Francisco Garcia Cabeza de Vaca, a former governor of the northern border state of Tamaulipas, who had been accused of corruption.
Tens of thousands of Israelis on Saturday protested their far-right government’s plans to overhaul the legal system, three days after parliament advanced a bill that would enable lawmakers to overturn a Supreme Court decision with a simple majority.
The “Supreme Court override” bill’s approval in a preliminary vote in the Knesset was the latest step by Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition toward realizing the judicial overhaul that is steaming ahead despite calls for dialogue and consensus from American Jews and Israel’s president, and the weekly mass protests.
In addition to weakening the country’s highest court, the protesters say the proposed changes threaten Israel’s democratic values and concentrate power with the ruling coalition in parliament. Netanyahu and his ruling coalition believe the court has had unchecked power for years.
For eight weeks, the weekly protests have gained momentum, with large sectors of Israeli society and businesses joining them. On Saturday, the main protest took place in the central city of Tel Aviv along numerous smaller demonstrations across the country.
The protesters held Israeli flags, flares, and posters with different messages against the judicial overhauls. “No Constitution, No Democracy,” said one placard. Some demonstrators stood behind a banner reading “They Shall Not Pass” and “We Shall Override,” referring to the vote.
A Pakistani court on Wednesday acquitted the parents of an exiled female human rights activist, a defense lawyer said, three years after the couple was arrested on charges of terror financing and sedition.
The 2019 arrests of Gulalai Ismail’s parents, Mohammad and Uzlifat Ismail, in the northwestern city of Peshawar, had drawn widespread condemnation. The U.S. State Department also expressed concern over the arrests.
On Wednesday, an anti-terrorism court acquitted the couple, saying the prosecution failed to prove the charges, according to the couple’s lawyer, Shabbir Hussain Gigyan.
Mohammad Ismail is a teacher and a social activist. His daughter fled to the U.S. in 2019 and she sought asylum there to avoid harassment by Pakistani security agencies over her investigations into alleged human rights abuses by soldiers.
In recent years, Pakistani activists and journalists have increasingly come under attack by the government and the security establishment, restricting the space for criticism and dissent. The criticism of the military can result in threats, intimidation, sedition charges and in some cases, being arrested with no warning.