CRI听力:Questions Raised about Inmates Fleeing in NE China

Armed police conduct blanket search for fleeing inmate Gao Yulun in a corn filed at the junction of Baihe village and Xinglong village, in Yanshou county, Harbin city, northeastern China's Heilongjiang province on Thursday, September 4, 2014. Gao is among three inmates who escaped from detention on the outskirts of Harbin on Wednesday after killing a guard. [Photo: CHINANEWS.com]

As the hunt continues for a third prisoner who escaped a detention center in Heilongjiang continues, new questions are being raised about how the fugitive and two other fellow inmates managed to escape in the first place.

CRI's Yu Yang has more. 

The three inmates escaped from detention on the outskirts of Heilongjiang's provincial capital Harbin earlier this week after killing a guard.

Two of the escapees, Wang Damin and Li Haiwei, have since been recaptured.

Gao Yulun is still at large.

Around a thousand police officers have fanned out around the region in the hunt for the remaining fugitive.

But as the search drags on, questions about HOW they escaped remain unanswered.

Newly-released surveillance video shows after Gao Yulun walked out of his cell with the guard around 4:19am, and the door of the cell remained wide open. The other two inmates simply walked out of their cell. Gao Yulun then strangled the guard to death with the help of one of the other two inmates.

Cheng Lei, associate professor at Renmin University, says the video shows an obvious violation of the rules.

"All the doors of the cells are required to be locked under normal conditions. If the guard has to open the door and bring out a prisoner overnight, he must follow required procedures. For example, at least two officers should be present. The moving of a prisoner also needs the approval of the shift leader, amongst other things. The procedures should be strictly followed. Obviously, the guard didn't follow them."

Detention centers are divided into separate areas.

Movement from one to another is through locked gateways.

Each section is also supposed to be patrolled by armed guards.

Surveillance video shows the three men then simply walked out of their detention zone without running into any guards.

Furthermore, serious offenders, such as those charged with murder, are supposed to be permanently handcuffed and monitored around the clock.

But the three men, who were all being held on charges of violent crimes, were not wearing handcuffs when they showed up in the video.

"It is incredible that so many safety regulations emphasized by the Ministry of Public Security are not properly implemented in practice. To me, it seems there were not enough guards on patrol at the time."

The three men later managed to make it out of the detention facility wearing police uniforms.

For CRI, this is Yu Yang.