Shandong to investigate inmate death after viral article questions official story

The Shandong prison authorities announced Sunday that an investigation has been launched into the death of an inmate at Jinan’s Qizhou Prison after a viral article raised doubts about the official explanation of events.

The Prison Administration of Shandong Province has contacted the family of the deceased, surnamed Li, and urged them to file an application for a postmortem with the procuratorial authorities of Jinan, the provincial capital, said a notice posted by the administration on its Sina Weibo account on Sunday.

The results of the autopsy will be disclosed as soon as the procuratorial authorities confirm them, the notice added.

The investigation was an- nounced after an article allegedly written by Li’s sister went viral on Friday on Baidu Tieba, a Chinese online forum.

The article claimed that Li’s body had “obvious” injuries on his chest and head, and rejected the explanation for his death given by prison guards on April 9. The prison officers reportedly said that Li died from choking on cotton fibers.

Li’s relatives were told he was in a critical condition in Jinan’s Second Hospital of Shandong University on April 9 and arrived at the hospital that night, but by the time they were allowed to see him on the afternoon of April 10 he had already died, the article claimed.

It added that his corpse had been sent to the morgue without the family being consulted.

Li, 26, had served 4 and a half years of a 5- year- long prison term for a traffic offense and was expected to be released this October, according to the Tieba post.