Society

Police accused of issuing fake warrants

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-05-06 07:39

BEIJING - Police in a county of North China's Hebei province issued fake warrants to detain six villagers in a land dispute for bail money, the Beijing News reported on Wednesday.

Insiders were quoted as saying it is a hidden practice that local police bureaus use to collect and confiscate bail money.

Song Shuchun and five fellow villagers from Lingshou county were taken away by police officers in May 2009 for being involved in a land dispute.

They were detained for criminal charges, though the police did not acquire sufficient evidence, the report said.

Song was alleged to have intentionally injured a man in the dispute, while five others were alleged to have damaged property belonging to the victim.

While two of them were bailed out the following day, four others, including Song, were sent to a detention center in Shijiazhuang, provincial capital of Hebei.

However, the detention center refused to receive them because of their ill health.

Insisting they be put into custody, the county's police chief, Zhang Qinghua, asked his subordinates to throw them into a local detention center, which was then under renovation and unfit for detaining suspects.

Song said the stinging smell of wet paint hurt his eyes and the roaring noise of machines caused him to suffer headaches.

Police officers then implied that their families pay 5,000 to 20,000 yuan ($732 to $2,929) to bail them out, or else they would face prison sentences.

Excluding Song, the other three villagers were bailed out after each of them paid 5,000 yuan. Song, who insisted on his innocence and refused to pay bail, was detained for five months.

Under the charge of intentional injury, he was sentenced in October 2009 to one year in prison with two years' reprieve and a fine of 15,000 yuan.

The villagers who paid to be bailed have not been placed on trial, nor has any of the bail money been returned to them.

They were later shocked to learn from Zhang Wenhui, former director of the legal affairs section of the local police bureau, that the warrants issued to detain them were actually fake, the report said.

Zhang, who was on maternity leave when the fake warrants were issued, was later removed from her post for confronting the county police chief about the case.

The report quoted an anonymous police officer in the county as saying that some police bureaus use fake warrants to detain suspects and then confiscate the bail money to help cover their own expenses.

Data provided by Zhang showed that the Lingshou county police bureau confiscated 140,000 yuan in bail money between July 8 and Sept 4, 2009.

The bureau chief, Zhang Qinghua, admitted on March 15 there were flaws in handling Song's case, but that the necessary legal procedures involved in detaining Song and the five others were legitimate.

He also insisted that the confiscation of bail money was implemented in accordance with legal procedures.