Mistaken identity leads to nine-year wrongful imprisonment

Three staff from the Guangdong High People's Court in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province, arrived at Li Kuixing's home in Sunji township of Lixin county, Anhui province, on Monday, to deliver the retrial decision of his younger brother's robbery case.

Previously, Li's brother Li Siqiang received a prison sentence for participating in multiple gang robbery cases from the Longhu district people's court in Shantou of Guangdong province. Li Siqiang died of illness shortly after he was released in the wake of serving a nine-year jail term in 2016, according to a Beijing News report on Tuesday.

Li Kuixing, who has appealed for his brother for eight years, said he believed Li Siqiang was unjustly accused, the report said.

"My brother has a congenital intellectual disability, and he had never been to Shantou," Li said.

He was detained because police found an identity card belonging to one of the suspects, Li Xiwen, in 2006, said Li Kuixing.

"My greatest wish was to clear my younger brother's injustice and clear him of guilt as soon as possible," said Li after receiving the retrial decision notice.

Li, 69, is currently undergoing chemotherapy to battle pancreatic malignancy, secondary lung malignancy, and secondary lymph node malignancy.

Li Kuixing is the oldest of four brothers. Li Siqiang was the second youngest.

Li recalled he had to quickly return home after he received a phone call from his mother in his hometown, telling him that his brother was missing in the spring of 2007. Li Kuixing was employed outside his hometown at that time.

After Li Siqiang went missing, Li and his family mobilized his relatives and friends to look for him. They were unable to locate him.

Zhu Xiaodong, the lawyer representing Li Siqiang in the case, told local media the family couldn't find him because he had been detained by police in Nanjing, Jiangsu province. Li Siqiang was mistaken for the fugitive, Liu Xiwen, as police found Liu Xiwen's ID card on Li Siqiang.

Zhu said that Li Siqiang did not look like Liu Xiwen in the photo on the ID card. However, Li Siqiang, who was wrongly detained, was first handed over to the Shantou police.

Shantou Longhu District People's Procuratorate then filed a public prosecution, and the local court held a hearing on Liu Xiwen's robbery case. During this period, nobody from the court and procuratorate found any identity issues with the defendant.

Li Kuixing said his brother didn't clearly explain why he had Liu Xiwen's ID card when he met him.

Then "Liu Xiwen" was sentenced to 12 years and 6 months in prison on Oct 11, 2007. After the trial, Li Siqiang, mistaken for Liu Xiwen, was sent to serve the jail term. Li Siqiang was later transferred to Shijiazhuang in Hebei province to continue to serve the sentence after having been in jail in Guangdong for a short period.

Li Kuixing learned his brother had been in prison only when police officers from Shantou arrived at his home to ask his mother to verify Li Siqiang's identity in 2009.

Staff from Shijiazhuang prison suspected Li's identity after an investigation, and Shantou police then investigated the identity issue of "Liu Xiwen" based on feedback from the prison.

Other criminals in the robbery cases who had been arrested also said they did not know Li Siqiang.

When Li Kuixing learned the real criminal, Liu Xiwen, was still at large, he formally submitted relevant reporting materials to the public security bureau of Lixin county, where Liu Xiwen's residence was registered, to report Liu in August, 2022. Liu's ID card indicated he was a villager in another township, only dozens of kilometers away from Li's village.

After Liu Xiwen was detained, he confessed to the fact that he had participated in multiple robberies in Shantou.

With the new evidence, Li Kuixing went to the upper court and requested a retrial of his brother's case.

After two rounds of commutation, Li Siqiang was released in 2016 after having been in prison for nine years and three months.