BEIJING
A Chinese police officer who was in charge of a case in which a teenager was executed after being wrongfully accused of murder has been arrested.
China’s state new agency Xinhua cited a local procuratorate as saying Thursday that Feng Zhiming, currently deputy director at a security bureau in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region’s capital, was under investigation on charges of taking advantage of duty.
The conviction against Huugjilt, who was 18-years-old when he was executed in 1996, was overturned Monday by the Inner Mongolia Higher People's Court in China’s north after it found the evidence against him to questionable and inadequate.
Despite telling police he had heard a cry for help before coming across a woman’s body, Huugjilt was sentenced to death in the killing of the victim in a public toilet in Honhot city. The youth’s execution, held two months after his sentencing, came amid a national crackdown against violent crime.
A convicted serial rapist and murderer named Zhao Zhihong was arrested in 2005, and confessed to the Honhot killing, as well as 17 other rape and murder cases. Despite facing trial in late 2006 for violent crimes against 10 women and girls between 1996 and 2005, no verdict has been issued to date.
The autonomous region announced Tuesday that Zhou would be prosecuted for the 1996 crime.
After Monday’s ruling, Zhao Jianping, the regional court’s deputy chief judge, visited Huugjilt’s tearful parents to issue an apology, Xinhua reported, bowing low while handing them the court order.
The parents had been petitioning China’s supreme court and the region's higher court since 2006.
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