MOSCOW, January 5 (Sputnik) — The trial of a man who murdered a woman 18 years ago and recently confessed his guilt will take place in China on Monday, nearly 2 decades after an innocent teenager was wrongfully executed, AFP reports.
The incident took place in 1996, after a Chinese woman was sexually assaulted and murdered in the bathroom of a Hohhot textile factory. The police arrested an 18-year-old young man named Hugjiltu, who was then interrogated for 2 days after the incident and eventually confessed his guilt. His execution took place 61 days after the crime, despite the fact that his parents constantly struggled to establish his innocence.
Hugjiltu was acquitted in December 2014, when a man named Zhao Zhihong confessed to this crime and other murders. Zhihong was arrested by Chinese police in 2005 under suspicion of conducting a series of killings and sexual assaults.
There were 17 official cases of capital punishment in China for 2014. However, this is only a small part of real number of executions, as they are predominantly kept secret, according to deathpenalyworldwide.org. Various human organizations estimate that the actual number of executions in China reaches several thousand a year, with the country topping the charts.
