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October 31, 2014

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Executed teenager’s case to be reopened

AUTHORITIES in north China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region are to reopen a case in which a teenager was executed after he was wrongfully convicted on rape and murder charges.

On April 9, 1996, 18-year-old Hugejiletu and Yan Feng were working at a woollen mill in the regional capital Hohhot when they heard a woman crying for help from the toilet. But by the time they got there, she was dead. She was naked and had been raped and strangled, yesterday’s Legal Evening News reported.

Hugejiletu went to the police, but Feng Zhiming, then police chief of Xincheng District, named him as the culprit. Despite a lack of evidence, the Hohhot Intermediate Peoples’ Court sentenced Hugejiletu to death and he was executed on June 10, 1996.

However, the arrest of serial killer Zhao Zhihong in October 2005 in Hohhot cast doubt on the verdict.

Zhao was said to have been involved in 21 cases of murder, rape and theft, between 1996 and 2005, killing nine females, including a college student, a government employee, a taxi driver and a 12-year-old girl.

Under interrogation, Zhao admitted to the killings but also claimed responsibility for a 10th murder — the one that led to Hugejiletu’s execution. Zhao was able to describe with great accuracy where, when and how he had killed 25-year-old Yang Huanzhi.

In an interview with local newspaper North News, Zhao said Yang’s rape and murder was the start of his life of crime.

But at his trial on November 28, 2006, prosecutors made no mention of that first killing, according to a Phoenix Satellite TV program aired in 2011.

Court sources said Zhao was so surprised he asked prosecutors: “I killed 10 people, not nine, why don’t you ask me about the murder in the woollen mill’s toilet?”

After the trial, he wrote to authorities saying: “I don’t know why prosecutors didn’t mention the toilet murder. I killed her. I hope to bear the blame for what I have done. I apply for a review for the case to return the fair name to the wrongly convicted and prove the justice of the law. Also, I want to face my doomed day without any regret.”

Zhao’s insistence he was guilty alerted the central government but a re-examination that was ordered has made little progress. Zhao’s trial was suspended and he is still in jail waiting for it to resume, the Legal Evening News reported.

Hugejiletu’s parents, Li Sanren and Shang Aiyun, have long been campaigning to have their son declared innocent and they suspect he was tortured to force a confession.

Yan, who was questioned but not charged with any offense, told reporters that when he and Hugejiletu were at the police station he could hear him shouting and tables and chairs being moved about. The next day, he saw Hugejiletu squatting, handcuffed to a radiator.

In an interview with Phoenix Satellite TV in 2011, Shang, Hugejiletu’s mother, said she and her husband had visited Beijing more than 20 times and had written nearly 80 letters to authorities without any response.

Shang said sometimes they were intercepted and forcibly taken back to Hohhot.

No officials involved in Hugejiletu’s case have so far been questioned while Feng is now deputy director of the Hohhot Public Security Bureau.




 

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