Hideko Hakamada campaigned for almost six decades to get her little brother, the world's longest-serving death row inmate, cleared. But at 92 she refuses to relax, campaigning against capital punishment in Japan and beyond.

"Courts are run by people and they obviously make mistakes," Hideko told AFP in an interview at a congress in Tokyo on the death penalty in East Asia where she was a keynote speaker.

"I fought for 58 years. I cannot just be sad and slow down," she said at the weekend event that included campaigners from China -- the country that executes the most people, rights groups say -- North Korea and elsewhere.

Her brother Iwao Hakamada was finally exonerated in 2024 after being convicted for a 1966 quadruple murder, in one of Japan's biggest miscarriages of justice in modern

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