Chinese farmer released after serving ten years for murder as ‘victim’ turns up alive

A Chinese farmer who served ten years of a 29-year sentence for murder has been released after the man he was supposed to have killed, and then beheaded, turned up alive in their home village in central China.

Zhao Zhensheng disappeared after a furious fight with Zhao Zuohai in 1999. After Zhao Zhensheng was reported missing and a headless body was discovered in a village well, the local police put two and two together and arrested his rival. The two men are not related.

The sister of the jailed man said that he had only confessed to the crime after police torture — a not uncommon practice in China as police try to solve a crime and keep their record looking good. She said: “My brother told me he was really treated unjustly.” She said that he had even showed her a scar on his forehead where police had hit him with a gun.

After his arrest, his wife also said that she had been tortured and finally confessed that plastic bags found around the headless body had come from her home. In 1999, Zhao Zuohai was given a suspended death sentence — later commuted to 29 years because of his good behaviour.

But then, on April 30, the missing Zhao Zhensheng, now partially paralysed, turned up in the village after an absence of ten years. He had run away after the two men fought because he feared he had inflicted such serious injuries on his enemy that he might have died. He only returned to the village because he was paralysed and needed to claim basic welfare payments.

He expressed no remorse for the fact that his rival had spent ten years of his life in jail. Zhao Zhensheng told one newspaper: “He had such a bad temper. He needed a lesson somewhere, somehow.”

However, Zhao Zuohai will receive some compensation for his decade-long wrongful imprisonment. The Henan provincial Higher People’s Court has awarded him $45,000 for the miscarriage of justice.

It is far from being the first such case in China. In 2005 She Xianglin, a government worker, was compensated with $67,000 after serving 11 years in prison for murdering his wife. He was freed when his wife later returned to their hometown. She Xianglin said that he had been tortured into making a false confession.

Original report here



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