Can you imagine spending more than half of your life in confinement waiting for the day you are told you will not see the end of? Waiting in a cell, restricted to one seat, unable to communicate with anyone, just sitting in anticipation of your death - for 41 years. This has been the life of Hakamada Iwao, the world's longest serving inmate on death row.

In another attempt to attain justice, the Sutton High Amnesty Youth Group is petitioning for the freedom of Mr. Iwao, who, at the age of 73, spends his life waiting for death. Formerly a professional boxer, Hakamada Iwao has constantly maintained he is innocent, despite his arrest, in which he had been questioned without a lawyer for 20 days. He was found guilty of murder, although much of the evidence was based on coerced confessions made during his unfair detainment and he has since won the support of the judge from his original trial.

The conditions endured by death row prisoners in Japan is so awful that recent investigations suggest that inmates are driven to mental illness due to prolonged periods of loneliness, facing execution in extremely harsh surroundings.

In Japan, death rows prisoners do not know when they will die until the morning of their execution and as the Director of Amnesty International UK, Kate Allen, states, "the mental anguish of not knowing whether each day is to be your last on earth is terrible enough, but Japan's justice system also sees fit to bury its death row prisoners in the most punitive regime of silence, isolation and sheer non-existence imaginable."

Sutton High Amnesty Youth Group has joined the legion acting on behalf of Hakamada Iwao, as well as other mistreated prisoners, to appeal to the Japanese government against unfair arrest and trials. We have added our photo of the punchy petition poster, which reads 'Free Hakamada Iwao', to a bank of similar photos gathered together for a visual presentation at the Japanese embassy in London on the 10th March.

Why not call for the re-trial of a potentially innocent, tortured man yourself by researching his case on the Amnesty International website? After all, every human being deserves rights.