Photos: Anguish as teenager sentenced to death for murder 18 years ago is declared innocent

In a sad turn of events, the family of a Chinese teenager executed after being convicted of murder and rape 18 years ago, howled in anguish as he was declared innocent by a court today…

According to AP,Hugjiltu was just 18 when he was found guilty of raping and murdering a woman in Hohhot, in 1996 and was put to death just 61 days after the woman was murdered.

In Hugjiltu’s case, authorities interrogated the teenager for 48 hours, after which he confessed to having raped and choked the woman in the toilet of a textile factory

After he was executed in June 1996, Hugjiltu’s family tried for nearly two decades to prove his innocence.But doubt was cast on the verdict when another man confessed to the crime in 2005, leading to the case being reopened last month…

Finally it was found Hugjiltu’s confession did not match the autopsy report, was inconsistent with ‘other evidence’, and that DNA evidence presented at the trial did not definitively connect him to the crime.

After the court in the autonomous region of northern China issued a statement today finding Hugjiltu not guilty, the dead man’s mother, father and brother burned a copy of the decision on his grave in a highly charged protest.

As he delivered the papers Zhao Jianping, the deputy president of the court, made a profound apology for its mistake in sentencing the teenager, also known as Qoysiletu, to death.After Hugjiltu’s mother Shang Aiyun had to be dragged from the teenager’s grave as she wailed in pain, his brother Zhaoligetu told Sina.com

: ‘My mother wished him ‘rest in peace’ and hoped he could reincarnate.’

Mr Jianping gave Hugjiltu’s parents compensation of 30,000 yuan (£3,093), the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The money was a personal donation by the head of the court, it added, rather than an official payment by the institution.

Many on social media decried what they saw as insufficient compensation for such a grave miscarriage of justice, with one asking: ‘Is 30,000 yuan really enough to buy the life of a family member?’