TOKYO - Japan on Thursday freed a 62-year-old man from prison after more than 17 years following new DNA tests that indicated he was innocent of the crime he was jailed for, killing a four-year-old girl.

Toshikazu Sugaya, a former bus driver for a kindergarten, smiled and waved from a car as he was taken from the prison near Tokyo, ending his time behind bars since his 1991 arrest.

"I am innocent, not the killer. I can tell you that for sure," Sugaya said in a televised news conference later in the day, where a supporter handed the frail, grey-haired man a bouquet of flowers.

"For 17 years, I kept telling myself that once I'm out I would have the police officers and prosecutors apologise to me. I will never forgive them."

Sugaya was arrested in December 1991 for allegedly kidnapping a four-year-old girl from a pachinko game parlour in Ashikaga, north of Tokyo in May 1990. The girl's body was found in a nearby river bed the next day.

The bus driver was convicted and received a life term in 1993, a sentence last upheld in 2000, in part because an initial DNA test were found to have detected his bodily fluids on the dead girl's underwear.

Sugaya's lawyers had demanded another DNA test, arguing that the forensic tests were unreliable in the early 1990s, and last December the Tokyo High Court ordered the second set of the genetic tests.

Separate tests conducted on behalf of both prosecutors and defence lawyers showed the sampled DNA did not match Sugaya's.

Prosecutor Keiichi Watanabe said Thursday: "We came to the conclusion that the probability is high for at least one of the second set of DNA tests to prove his innocence," news agency Jiji Press reported.

Prosecutors said they would approve a retrial, in which Sugaya is widely expected to be acquitted in order to fully clear his name. -AFP