Wrongfully convicted man is acquitted

A man in the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region who was originally given a death sentence for intentional injury and committing indecent acts with women about 20 years ago, was pronounced not guilty because of insufficient evidence, his lawyer said on Thursday.

Zhou Yuan, from Yining, was detained in 1997 after he was said to have intentionally harmed and committed indecent acts with several females in the area. A year later, he was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve at the city's intermediate people's court. He was 27 at the time.

After two decades of appeals by the man's family, the regional High People's Court on Thursday cleared Zhou because of unclear facts and insufficient evidence, his lawyer Wang Xing said.