(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-05-16 18:53

BEIJING  -- An unemployed man in Beijing was detained for 10 days for posting an untruthful message about the Wenchuan quake in Sichuan Province on an Internet forum just to kill time.

The 25-year-old man, surnamed Liu, was arrested on Wednesday night in the city's Fengtai District and is currently held in custody, said a spokesman for the Beijing municipal public security authority Thursday.

Police was tipped off around 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday that someone in the Xiluoyuan neighborhood was posting rumors of the quake on the Internet, and that his post had attracted a good many hits.

After investigation, police focused their attention on a family of three: an elderly couple and their son. The couple did not even know how to use a computer, while the son had no job and was obsessed with surfing the Internet.

The junior Liu confessed to the police that he was bored and resorted to the Internet to kill time. At about 2:00 a.m. Tuesday, the day following the quake, he came across a post that caught his eye because it distorted the truth about the disaster. He posted a similar message, because he felt his message would be sensational and would earn him a lot of clicks.

Earlier public security bureaux in 11 provinces and municipalities including Hebei, Liaoning and Anhui, found more than 40 messages that circulated malicious rumors about the earthquake on the Internet and found 17 people were responsible.

Among them, two were put in custody by local public security bureaux, a means of punishment that ranges from one to 15 days' detention, another two were asked to write apologies and another 13 were given warnings.