Those awaiting execution in Japan's prisons live in terror that each day could be their last – and that they'll have only minutes to prepare themselves for the gallows. David McNeill meets an innocent survivor of the system
When his body isn't groaning under the weight of its 83 years, and the sun is shining over his native Kyushu in southern Japan, Sakae Menda sometimes forgets the ordeal he suffered and knows he is lucky to be alive. But most days, there is no forgetting that the Japanese state stole 34 years of his life as retribution for a crime that he didn't commit, nor that he thought every one of those 12,410 days would be his last. "Waiting to die is a kind of torture," he says, "worse than death itself."
