7 jailed for fatal torture of criminal suspect

A total of seven people — three police officers and four police assistants — in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang Province, have been sentenced to prison terms of between 12 and 30 months for torturing seven people last year, the Legal Evening News reported yesterday.

Liang Shiquan, one of the victims, died after being tortured with electric shocks for "refusing to confess" to trafficking drugs, the report said.

A lack of evidence meant prosecutors could not charge the seven defendants with murder.

Conveniently for them, Liang's body was cremated before prosecutors were able to carry out an autopsy, it said.

A deputy police chief from Harbin's Daowai District, who ordered the cremation, has been charged with abusing his power, the report said.

The crime was exposed in March last year, when district prosecutors received a report from a victim's family, alleging that police officers had used torture to get a confession from a drug trafficking suspect surnamed Zhai.

Zhai's family said they were told about it by three people who were detained with him on March 7 last year.

An investigation found that three police assistants — Cheng Xiaowei, Pan Yongquan and Li Longchun — poured mustard oil into Zhai's nose during an interrogation.

They also tied him to a metal stool, connected his toes to electric wires and generated electricity by cranking an old-fashioned telephone, according to the written judgment issued by the Daowai District People's Court.

Zhai was in intense pain and screamed for several hours, the verdict said.

When prosecutors investigated Zhai's experience of torture in late March, district police station told them Liang died suddenly during interrogation.

Police said Liang was detained on March 24 with another suspect surnamed Wang for drug trafficking, but he died from "disease" while being questioned.

Prosecutors, however, found obvious traumas on Liang's body and suspected he had been tortured.

With two suspicious cases in a month, prosecutors decided to carry out a full-scale inspection.

Soon after, Liang's body was cremated, leaving no time for an autopsy. It aroused more suspicion from prosecutors.

Further investigation found that Wu Yan, the political commissar of the criminal investigation office, was in charge of the interrogation involving Liang, while police assistants Cheng Xiaowei, Pan Yongquan and Li Yingbin tortured him with electronic shocks.

Liang was gagged with a towel to muffle his screams, while he was beaten in the face with a shoe.

When a police officer named Zhang Siliang went into the torture room, he found Liang had lost consciousness. Wu tried to perform CPR and called the emergency services, but Liang died before they arrived.

Wu handed himself to prosecutors on June 1 last year, some time after the other six were detained. All seven were charged with forcing confessions by torture on December 26.

By law, police are not allowed to use torture to get a confession.

According to Daowai police, the police assistants confessed to torturing seven suspects, including Zhai and Liang, in March last year.

They said they were acting under police officers' orders, a claim that was not denied by Wu or the other two officers.