The High Court judgment transforms the strangulation of a young women into manslaughter. This despite her body being shoved into a suitcase and thrown into a lake. Mother of the victim, "the judgment shows that in China you can buy the law with power or money."

Beijing (AsiaNews / Agencies) - Is it possible to kill someone in a pillow fight? And if so, is it possible to do so by accidentally strangling them to death, a process requiring several minutes of intense effort, without realising what is happening?

These may seem like ridiculous questions, but they were accepted by the Beijing People's High Court in its judgment last week that overturned the murder conviction of Li Ang, who killed his girlfriend Amanda Zhao in Burnaby, a satellite city of Vancouver 9 October 2002.

Li, the son of a retired senior officer of the People's Army, , had fled to China after Zhao's body was found in a suitcase. The Beijing authorities have refused to grant his extradition to Canada, claiming that both Li and the victim were Chinese. However in 2012 he was convicted of murder by a Chinese court. That verdict was hailed as the result of cooperation and sharing of evidence between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Chinese authorities.

But the outcome of Li'sappeal - in which his life sentence was changed to manslaughter and reduced to seven years - casts a shadow on future cooperation, according to a the Vancouver Chinese community activist Gabriel Yiu. Yiu was the lawyer for Zhao's parents, who had used their life savings to send their only child to study in Canada.

The verdict on appeal is largely tied to the statement that Zhao was killed after a pillow fight that somehow turned deadly. But a cursory reading of the 32 pages judgment issued by the Beijing Court reveals the the utter implausibility of Li's description of events. Not only did he claim to have accidentally killed Zhao in a pillow fight, he said that it all took place while he was blindfolded, leaving him oblivious to Zhao's death struggles.

"Li and Zhao Jiaming - reads the judgment - played 'pillow fight', which involved blindfolding of their eyes with pillow cases and attacking each other without knowing which part of the body was exactly hit."

During the "battle", "Li hugged Zhao from behind, with his hands pulling both ends of the pillow that covered Zhao from her head to chest. He pulled the pillow tight from behind, so tight and strongly that he felt Zhao's body turning weak".

But it was only after a few minutes, when Zhao had stopped moving, that Li "thought she might be dead," and let go.

Li and his cousin Zhang Han, who lived with the couple, then put the body in a suitcase and Zhao dumped it 100 miles away, in Stave Lake, where it was found by hikers.

Wracked by guilt, Zhang confessed his role in the tragedy and named Li as the killer in a letter to Zhao's parents, which he concluded by writing "I'm sorry" 60 times.

But in the judgment of the High Court said that Li "felt Zhao using stronger force when they played pillow fight. Li thus reacted by using stronger force that eventually led to the victim's death. Case evidence proved that Li's conduct can be seen and confirmed as an instance of negligence leading to the death of the victim in a criminal case of negligent manslaughter".

Yiu, who spoke with Zhao's family a few hours after the ruling, said they were "totally shocked and appalled." Zhao's mother, Yang Bao-ying, said: "We neither understand nor accept the ruling. The ruling changes our opinion about the fairness of the law. The ruling abundantly represents that the law can be bought with power or money in China".

 

• china
• canada
• strangulation
• murder
• manslaughter
• justice
• corruption