Chinese man arrested for poisoning frozen dumplings
After having initially blamed the Japanese for the case of the poisoned dumplings that badly sickened several Japanese people back in 2008, the Chinese authorities have found a disgruntled former factory employee whom they blame for the entire fiasco:
The employee is said to have admitted that he used a syringe to inject poison into the frozen dumplings. It is not clear how the Chinese police obtained the man’s confession. The suspect’s father has declared that his son would never commit such a crime.
The FTV report embedded above includes interviews with people on the street in Beijing, none of whom have heard about the news. One man expresses disbelieve that a Chinese person was responsible. Chinese newspapers have reported the story, but it has apparently been played down.
Meanwhile, the Mainichi has pointed to some strange things about the case presented by the Chinese authorities:
According to the Security Ministry, police concluded that the syringes found in a sewer matched those described by the suspect and the results of their inspections at the Tianyang Food Plant in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, where the dumplings were produced. However, the head of the public security bureau avoided confirming whether the syringes contained traces of methamidophos, while also stating that “as they were in the mud for more than two years, we probably won’t get fingerprints.”
The needles of medical syringes used in China are 0.25 millimeters in diameter or more, but according to a source in the Chinese government the syringe needles used in the poisoning were unusually slim, probably measuring 0.2 millimeters in diameter or less. Furthermore, Chinese authorities provided no explanation for the organic phosphorous-based insecticide dichlorvos and the toluene Japanese tests uncovered in Tianyang Food Plant products.
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