Chinese farmer returns home after getting suspended sentence for faking tiger photos
18/11/2008 17:58
The farmer found guilty of faking photographs of an endangered tiger was
returning home after a court handed down a suspended sentence as a result of
appeal.
Zhou Zhenglong, who had been in custody for two months, left Xunyang
County Detention Center, Shaanxi Province, at about 11 am today for
home.
"I'm so happy to be able to return home," said Zhou.
It will takes
him about five hours to get home to Zhenping County.
Zhou was sentenced last
night to two and a half years in prison with a three-year reprieve by a court of
justice in Shaanxi.
"I want to thank the court for giving me a lighter
sentence," the farmer said in court last night.
In the next three years, he
will be under police supervision.
The Intermediate People's Court of Ankang
City also fined Zhou Zhenglong 2,000 yuan (about US$292) for fraud and illegally
owning 93 military bullets.
The court also ordered him to return a
20,000-yuan reward to the provincial forestry department.
The court said
Zhou's motive was to swindle the reward and he was clear that individuals were
forbidden to own ammunition. But the court handed down a lighter sentence
because he confessed his crimes.
Zhou was initially sentenced on September 27
at the People's Court in Xunyang County. According to the first ruling, the
54-year-old was given two and a half years in prison, a 2,000 yuan fine and was
ordered to return the reward.
Zhou appealed the ruling on Oct. 8.
Zhou
faked pictures of a South China tiger last year. It is a subspecies that is
believed extinct in the wild in China.
The provincial forestry department
announced Zhou's "discovery" to the public in October 2007, and gave him a
20,000-yuan reward.
Doubts mounted on the Internet after netizens found an
old Lunar New Year poster showing a tiger that looked exactly the same as Zhou's
photo.
Police arrested Zhou in June after seizing an old tiger poster, which
Zhou allegedly used to produce his photos. They also found a wooden model of a
tiger paw and 93 bullets in his home.
A spokesman with the Shaanxi provincial
government said in June that Zhou had used the wooden cat's paw to fabricate
tigers' footprints in the snow.
The provincial government announced in late
June that Zhou's tiger photos were fabricated.
Zhou's defense lawyers claimed
outside the court after the first court hearing that it was not Zhou who was
solely responsible for the bad publicity generated by the case, saying the
"cursory release of the news by relevant departments" helped promote the
fraud.
A total of 13 government staff in Shaanxi were sacked or reprimanded
as a result of the case.
Li Qian, a junior wildlife preservation official in
Zhou's home county of Zhenping was sacked for failing to conduct a site survey
to prove the tiger photos genuine, said a spokesman with the provincial
department of supervision.
The spokesman said Li also fabricated a survey
report and was therefore directly responsible for the government's cursory
release of Zhou's "discovery".
The case also led to the sackings of Zhenping
County's forestry chief Qin Dapeng, who failed to find holes in Li's report and
trade chief Xie Kunyuan, who provided cameras and films to Zhou and helped Zhou
develop the fake tiger photos.
Four officials from the provincial forestry
department were also removed, including two deputy chiefs.
Xinhua
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