The Hongcouver | 'I strangled her by accident in a blindfolded pillow fight': A killer’s explanation that only Beijing’s high court buys

Is it possible to kill someone in a pillow fight? And if so, is it possible to do so by accidentally strangling them to death, a process requiring several minutes of intense effort, without realising what is happening?

Both propositions sound ludicrous. But they represent the Beijing High People’s Court’s preferred version of events, in its decision last week to overturn the murder conviction of Li Ang, who killed girlfriend Amanda Zhao in the Vancouver satellite city of Burnaby on October 9, 2002.

Li, the son of a senior retired PLA officer, fled to China after Zhao’s body was found stuffed in a suitcase. Beijing authorities refused to allow his extradition to Canada, since both Li and the victim were Chinese, but Li was eventually convicted of murder by a Chinese court in 2012. That verdict was hailed as the result of landmark cooperation and evidence-sharing between Canadian and Chinese police and other authorities.

But the result of Li’s appeal last week - in which his conviction was changed to manslaughter and his life sentence reduced to seven years – casts a shadow over future cooperation, according to Vancouver community activist Gabriel Yiu. Yiu has acted as an advocate for Zhao’s impoverished Chinese parents, who used their life savings to send their only child to study in Canada.

Li, who changed his name to Li Jiaming after the killing, will go free in 2016.