BEIJING — Three police officers and four other people have been convicted of torturing suspects to obtain confessions, China’s official state news agency reported, in a rare instance of prosecution of the practice.
One of the cases resulted in the death of a man who was tortured with electric shocks and hit on the head and face with a shoe, Xinhua News Agency said Sunday. Mustard oil was poured into suspects’ mouths in other forms of torture, it said.
The seven cases happened in March 2013 at the Daowai district police sub-bureau in the northeastern city of Harbin. Three police officers and four people hired by police to help with the investigations were convicted and given prison sentences of up to 2½ years, it said.
Chinese authorities have said that the problem of torture and coerced confessions has been effectively addressed by measures introduced in the past five years, including physically separating interrogators from suspects, video recording of interrogations, and a formalized rule that judges should reject evidence obtained through torture.
In April, Zhao Chunguang, a national official overseeing police detention facilities, said there had not been a single case of torture to coerce a confession at any detention center in the past five years.
But Xinhua’s report said Harbin Intermediate People’s Court heard appeals Aug. 29 by four of the seven people who had been convicted by a trial court on torture charges.