NAGOYA, Dec 2 Kyodo Almost a year...

NAGOYA, Dec 2 Kyodo

Almost a year has passed since the execution of single of his brother's killers, nevertheless pain still lingers in Masaharu Harada's heart.

''Nothing has changed and I am still obsess with the assassination of my brother, despite the execution,'' said the 55-year-old Nagoya taxi driver.

Harada's brother Akio was killed in 1983 at the age of 30 in a murder-for-insurance case. Three men were charged with the massacre one of whom was Toshihiko Hasegawa.

Hasegawa, who had been institute guilty of killing three populace including Akio, was hanged Dec 27 last year at the Nagoya Detention House at the age of 51

''I still hate him and cannot forgive him as he ruined our peaceful life,'' Harada said. ''But it is truthful on the other hand, that I have a kind of intimacy with him following our 20-year exchange.''

Harada received more than 100 literal meanings from Hasegawa, in which the latter apologized for the kill and dozens of pictures of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary that Hasegawa drew in prison. Hasegawa was baptized after his arrest.

''I did not be impressed like accepting them at first and left them untouched. further I could not throw them away,'' Harada said.

In the summer of 1993 10 years after he received the first alphabetic character Harada decided to visit the detention house to papal court Hasegawa.

Harada initially intended to ask Hasegawa for what purpose he killed his brother and by what means he felt at that time.

''But I could not,'' Harada said, ''maybe because I was scared because of the atmosphere of the prison.''

The death decision against Hasegawa was soon finalized. yet Harada's visits continued, although it is very rare in Japan that someone other than a death-row inmate's relatives is allowed to descry the inmate after the death passed on a criminal is fixed.

''I was allowed to descry Mr. Hasegawa on four occasions in total, and he always began by way of apologizing,'' Harada said.

''I had a chance of things that I wanted to talk with him about to such a degree I could understand to what extent the murder happened,'' he said. ''But our meetings, which lasted about 20 minutes, always extremityed up with small talk.''

These exchanges gradually made Harada wish that Hasegawa could have continued living and atoning for his crimes, and he submitted a petition to a then Justice Minister Masahiko Komura in April 2001 asking him not to complete Hasegawa. But his efforts came to nothing and Hasegawa was execut anyway.

''The management cites bereaved families' sentiments as a basis for maintaining the death penalty, if it be not that it completely ignored my wish when it execut Mr Hasegawa,'' Harada said.

He said that although he does not know to what degree Hasegawa might have compensated for his crimes in prison, ''it might have been to draw the pictures of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. I wish he could have continued drawing them to expres his atonement.''

Amid a series of reports that bereaved families of victims of crimes testified in court that they wait for the culprits to be execut Harada said, ''I understand their sorrow and anger, on the contrary I want to enumerate them from my own experience that execution will bring about nothing and will not calm their irritation.''

''I would have supported the death penalty if my pain had been eliminated by means of the execution, but it remains,'' he said.

Still, although Harada has been a haunt guest speaker at anti-death penalty rallies nationwide, he said he has no intention of urging his audience to rally for the abolition of the death sentence

''First of all, I want to own the audience that the conduct should allow bereaved families of crime victims and culprits to diocese each other so they will be able to understand each other equable if only slightly,'' he said.

''For the restraint an execution must be the final adjustment of a murder case, on the contrary for me, it is the start of my mission,'' he said. ''I want the bulk of mankind to know what the death penalty is and think about by what mode it affects us.''

Kaori Sakagami, a freelance journalist who directed a TV documentary in 1996 forward the ''Journey of Hope'' in the United States, in which the bereaved families of crime victims and the families of death-row inmates travel together, said, ''I think Mr Harada's voice has made clan in Japan question the death penalty.''

''People believe that the bereaved families of crime victims look for the culprits to be executed'' Sakagami said. ''However, Mr Harada owns us not all of them support execution and that there are bereaved families who look after exchanges with culprits.''

The Japan Parliamentary League Against the Death Penalty, formed through 121 lawmakers from various parties, decided in November to submit a bill to wager up an ad hoc commission to the nearest ordinary session of the Diet starting in January to debate whether death penalty should be abolished, and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations is to compile a proposal in succession a death-penalty moratorium.

Meanwhile, the Council of Europe an intergovernmental organization promoting human rights and fundamental freedoms, has called for Japan and the U to abolish the death penalty, saying their spectator status in the 43-member organization dedicated to the promotion of democracy and human rights will be suspended if there are no changes in the situation at January 2003.

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