The world's longest-serving death row prisoner thanked his supporters for helping him achieve "complete victory" after a Japanese court last week overturned his decades-old murder conviction.

The world's longest-serving death row inmate hailed his historic acquittal as a "complete victory" on Sunday, just days after a Japanese court declared Iwao Hakamada innocent of a 1966 quadruple murder.

A Japanese court ruled Thursday that an 88-year-old former boxer was not guilty in a retrial for a 1966 quadruple murder, reversing an earlier wrongful conviction after decades on death row. Iwao Hakamada’s acquittal by the Shizuoka District Court makes him the fifth death-row convict to be found not guilty in a retrial in postwar Japanese criminal justice.