Cops nab wrong 'fugitive' four times

• Source: Global Times
• [21:52 November 11 2009]
• Comments

When Ding Qingdong, a businessman from Heilongjiang Province, was arrested as a criminal fugitive as he arrived at Beijing Capital International Airport on October 24 he wasn't happy, but not surprised. It was the fourth time Chinese police had nabbed the wrong man.

"I was mad. It was the fourth time I'd been arrested, just because my ID card number is the same as an escaped criminal's," said Ding.

The first time Ding was arrested was the autumn of 2007 while he was doing business in Hunchun, Jilin Province. The policemen who arrested him found his ID card was almost identical to that of Wei Yongtao, the runaway criminal they were seeking: same ID number, same address, only the names were different.

Wei was wanted for severely stabbing a man over in fight over a pack of cigarettes in Handan, Hebei Province and was listed online as a fugitive. After confirming that Ding had nothing to do with Wei, police officials wrote a letter testifying to his innocent identity in order to avoid another mixup.

But he forgot to carry the letter with him when cops in Changchun rousted from a hotel in the middle of the night in August 2008 when he was attending an Agricultural Fair. "After I was arrested twice, I took the letter with me wherever I went, in case I got arrested again. " So when he was arrested at the Jinan airport in Shandong Province a year later, he produced the letter and police let him go with an apology.

"I can't bear it any more," he said recently in Beijing. "It's so shameful to be arrested in public. I will go to the police station that originally issued my ID card and ask for an explanation, whether they made a mistake or because my ID card was fraudulently used by Wei."

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