Mystery of ‘unguarded’ detention center, four sacked
Print Edition
FOUR people have been sacked following a breakout from a detention center in northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province.
Police in Harbin, the provincial capital, said yesterday that the Yanshou Public Security Bureau’s deputy director, the Yanshou Detention House’s director, and his deputy and an official who were supposed to be on duty at the time three criminals escaped, have been removed from their posts.
Prosecutors said the detention center’s director and his deputy will be charged with negligence.
Mystery remains over why the three managed to escape so easily after China Central Television aired surveillance footage. The video only captured images of a police officer who was killed and the convicts — Li Haiwei, Gao Yulun and Wang Damin. The facility didn’t seem to have any officers on patrol, guards at the gate or armed police, according to the footage.
Usually, a county detention center is staffed with at least 12 police officers. “But we only saw one. It is really weird,” Chen Lei, a deputy law professor at Renmin University, said during the program which aired the video.
The lack of detention center staff was all the more remarkable in that the three were known to be dangerous and had been convicted of serious offenses.
Gao was waiting for a review of his death penalty for murder. The others were awaiting sentence — Li for murder and Wang for intentional injury which had led to death.
However, the video showed that only Gao wore shackles on his ankles while other two could move freely. “It really needs further investigation to see whether the police officer let down his defenses because he had a direct and special relationship with the inmates,” Chen said.
The video showed the escape began at 4:19am on Tuesday, when a police officer ushered an inmate, whom CCTV identified as Gao, from his cell. The pair could be seen chatting on their way to the duty room.
After they disappeared from the video, another two inmates left the open cell and followed.
The video then picks up Gao and the police officer in the duty room, where Gao walks behind him, seizing him around the throat. The other two rush into the room and one helps Gao tackle the officer while the third finds handcuffs and shackles in a drawer. Seeming not to know whether the officer was already dead or dying, he is handcuffed and shackled. The video shows that Gao’s shackles are no longer on his ankles.
The three then disappear from the video for a while. When they show up again, one is in full police uniform.
The three then go through an open door into the facility’s lounge and one opens a door to the outside while the other two go back to change into police uniform too — one returns wearing a police coat while the other is in a short-sleeved police shirt.
They leave the lounge and walk out of an unguarded gate. They appear calm and one is even smoking a cigarette.
At the last minute they are spotted by a guard in a lookout post. He shouts to them but is ignored and the three begin to walk more quickly. His suspicions aroused, the officer fires a warning shot and the three men begin running.
Li, 29, was caught near Yushan Village on Wednesday while 35-year-old Wang was seized in Xinsheng village in the early hours of Thursday. Police are still hunting for Gao.
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