Death row prisoners in Japan driven to insanity...

Japan's new government is under pressure to abolish the death penalty after the human rights group Amnesty claimed the country's death row inmates are being driven insane and exposed to "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment.

An Amnesty report said the practice of telling inmates they are to be hanged just hours before they are taken to the gallows causes "significant mental illness". The charity called for an immediate halt to executions.

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Among the prisoners singled out by the report is Iwao Hakamada, a former professional boxer who has spent 41 years on death row – thought to be longer than any other condemned inmate in the world.

Hakamada, who was found guilty in 1968 of the murder of four members of the same family, was interrogated for 20 days without access to a lawyer and eventually convicted on the basis of a signed confession. Full story...

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