China's procuratorial bodies at various levels have shown more teeth in fighting against illegally extended custody and a number of prosecutors have received various degrees of administrative punishment for holding people in extended custody without legal authority.

Liao Hongbin, a public prosecutor at the People's Procuratorate of Chenzhou, a city in Central China's Hunan Province, was dismissed from office for leaving 10 criminal cases involving 29 suspects unsettled and thus keeping the suspects incarcerated.

Most of the suspects were kept in custody for two to three months and five people in one case were held in custody for one and a half years before having their cases taken to court, according to the Supreme People's Procuratorate.

Zhang Zhongfang, a spokesman for the procuratorate, said his office had discovered 16 more people detained beyond the allowed period by public prosecutors' offices after his office had already exposed and resolved a total of 359 cases of unlawfully extended custody by July 22.

Criminal suspects and the accused in criminal cases are usually held in detention facilities until the court makes its final judgment. And no one should be determined guilty unless the court so adjudicates according to law.

"The illegally extension of custody is a major violation of criminal suspects' human rights,'' said Zhang.

The legal period of custody of criminal suspects ranges from 14 days to six and a half months between the arrest and the trial, according to China's Criminal Procedure Law.

In addition to public prosecutors, police and judges are also in a position to illegally hold suspects in custody for longer periods than is allowed.

Chen Zhendong, head of the procuratorial department in charge of prison and detention houses under the supreme procuratorate, said a total of 3,630 criminal suspects under extended custody had been reported by the end of last week, and around 3,000 of them were held up by the courts.

Chen said his office would make more efforts to curb such illegal actions among the police and in the courts, as well as in public prosecutors' offices, to protect the human rights of criminal suspects held in custody.

In addition to this, criminal suspects and the accused in criminal cases held at detention centres may appeal to local public prosecutors if they are being held in extended custody, according to a regulation issued yesterday by the supreme procuratorate.

The regulation also stipulates that officials who are responsible for extended custody cases will be disciplined and may even be criminally charged.

In another development, the Beijing High People's Court announced yesterday that it had uncovered and resolved 53 criminal cases involving 103 suspects who had been illegally held in extended custody.

According to court authorities, the trials for the long-standing cases will all be concluded by the end of this month and suspects in these cases who are in extended custody and are not found guilty will be released.

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