Senior PRC official executed for killing his young mistress

A member of China's parliament was executed on Wednesday along with a policeman accomplice for killing his young mistress in the latest harsh sentence meted out to a corrupt official, state media said.

Duan Yihe (段義和), 61, a former delegate to the National People's Congress, was executed for killing his 31-year-old mistress, Xinhua news agency said.

Duan's nephew Chen Zhi (陳志), a local policeman who planted a mixture of explosive chemicals in a car belonging to the mistress, was also executed.

Chinese Web sites carried gruesome pictures of the crime scene, and news that a senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official was responsible caused widespread scandal.

Duan was also declared guilty for accepting 1.69 million yuan (US$223,000) in bribes, Xinhua said, citing the Supreme People's Court of China.

He confessed to urging his nephew to arrange a traffic accident so that his mistress "would lose her ability to think," state media reported previously.

Duan began his relationship with Liu in 2000, buying a house for the divorced former waitress and arranging jobs for many of her relatives, media reports said.

He later became irritated at Liu's continuing demands for money and insistence that he get a divorce and marry her, the reports said. She eventually threatened to report him for corruption.

Duan was arrested a week after Liu's murder on July 9.

Following the crime, Duan was stripped of his posts and expelled from the CCP.

With a five-yearly CCP leadership meeting approaching next month, China has made a point of levying harsh punishments against corrupt officials.

These include the execution in July of Zheng Xiaoyu (鄭筱萸), former head of the State Food and Drug Administration, for taking bribes from drug makers. Fake or toxic drugs killed dozens of Chinese on his watch.