China executes Shanghai police killer

Chinese authorities announced they had executed an unemployed man on Wednesday who became an unlikely cult hero after murdering 6 policemen in what he said was revenge for a wrongful arrest.

Yang Jia, 28, was executed in Shanghai after China's Supreme People's Court approved the sentence, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

He was convicted in September of going on a stabbing frenzy in a Shanghai police station on July 1 in revenge for apparently being wrongfully detained on suspicion of stealing a bicycle.

He lost an appeal against the sentence last month after judicial proceedings that his supporters said were flawed, complaints that were repeated on Wednesday.

"Yang Jia is dead, there are a lot of holes in the legal process and many unanswered questions," Liu Xiaoyuan, a Beijing lawyer who closely followed the case, told AFP.

"I just spoke to his father, he's very sad and doesn't want to talk."

The case became a lightning rod for controversy because it raised questions about police harassment, with some regarding Yang as a victim who stood up to abuse commonly suffered by marginalised people in Chinese society.

His mother, Wang Jingmei, who raised Yang as a single parent, was also detained and placed in a mental home following the murders, adding to the litany of complaints and alleged injustices surrounding the case.

One other particular concern was the various courts' refusal to look further into assertions by Yang's lawyers that he was mentally unstable.

Wang told Xinhua on Tuesday night she received a copy of the supreme court's judgement dated November 21.

"They said he would be executed within 7 days and that I could request a final meeting with him," she was quoted as saying.

Officials had brought her to Shanghai to see her son on Monday morning, a day after releasing her from the Beijing mental institution where she had been held since the attack, Xinhua reported.

She had no idea Monday would be the last time she would see her son, the report said.

Little is known about Yang, a Beijing native described as a lonely man who loved surfing the Internet and reading, particularly art books.

He appeared to snap after police rejected his repeated demands for 10,000 yuan (1,460 dollars) in compensation for psychological damage he told the court he suffered after police beat him during his overnight detention in October 2007.

Police denied any beating took place.

Yang began his attack on the police station where he was held by igniting petrol bombs at the gates, before forcing his way in.

He stabbed nine police officers and a security guard, and made it to the 21st floor of the district police headquarters before he was overpowered and arrested, according to state media reports.

In a rare protest outside the Shanghai's Higher People's Court at the start of last month's appeal, about a dozen protesters donned T-shirts featuring Yang's face before they were quickly taken away by police.

Their T-shirts had a quote from Yang reading: "If you don't give me a reason, then I will teach you a lesson."

After the execution was reported, Internet users posted tributes, calling him a hero.

"When you hold a knife up to the police, it's doomed to end this way. But Chinese history will remember Yang Jia's name forever," read one tribute that reflected many Internet postings.

Very few said Yang deserved his fate, although some did.

"Don't forget Yang Jia is a murderer," one Internet poster wrote.

Source: Agence France-Presse