A FUJIAN Province court said yesterday it had ordered compensation of 1.14 million yuan (US$182,000) to a former death row prisoner, who was acquitted on charges of poisoning two children last year after spending eight years in prison.

    Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court on Sunday ruled that Nian Bin, 39, should be paid 589,000 yuan for loss of personal freedom and another 550,000 yuan for mental suffering.

    Nian, a former food stall owner in Fuzhou’s Pingtan County, was accused of poisoning his neighbors with rat poison, leading to the death of two children and injuries to four others in July 2006. Police viewed him as a suspect because he was not on good terms with the victims’ family.

    But Nian said he was tortured into confessing during police interrogations and had pursued his appeals for years.

    The first verdict came in February 2008, when Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court sentenced Nian to death.

    He was later convicted several times and spent eight years in prison before being acquitted.

    In August 2014, the Fujian provincial higher court overturned Nian’s 2008 conviction for murder and ordered his release, citing insufficient evidence. This was the final ruling after three guilty verdicts and subsequent appeals.

    China has vowed to prevent “extorting confessions by torture” and halt miscarriages of justice with a “timely correction mechanism.”

    Nian, with his family members and attorneys, had applied for compensation of more than 15 million yuan Dec. 25, and asked Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court for an apology. The court accepted the application four days later.

    Under the State compensation law, courts are required to reach a verdict within two months of litigants submitting applications, and the judgment should be delivered within 10 days of it being reached.

    “We want to have a face-to-face talk with the court to obtain more specific information, such as how it decides the amount of compensation,” Nian’s elder sister, Nian Jianlan, said.(SD-Agencies)