By Bae Ji-sook
Staff reporter
The prosecution is investigating five officers at the Yangcheon Police Station in western Seoul over their alleged manipulation of surveillance camera footage showing their torturing criminal suspects.
They are also accused of having tried to cover up their actions by bargaining with the victims.
The investigators at the Seoul Southern Public Prosecutors' Office summoned the officers Sunday and asked whether they intentionally erased footage of specific days to conceal their alleged wrongdoings.
The prosecution found that images from March 9 to April 2 were left out of evidence handed in by the officers. March 9 was the day when three criminal suspects claim to have been beaten inside patrol cars and April 2 was when prosecutors made a visit to the police detention center to verify the claims.
A surveillance camera expert has reportedly told the investigators that erasing specific footage from the automatically recording cameras is easy.
"We have requested the Supreme Prosecutors' Office restore the hard disc and to verify whether the deletion was intentional," a prosecutor said.
The investigators are also looking into whether the alleged abuse has taken place and whether the head of the officers visited the detention center and urged one of the suspects to withdraw his complaint.
The allegation of torture against criminal suspects by police officers came to the surface when the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) filed a complaint last Wednesday. It claimed that five police officers at the Yangcheon station employed inhuman methods to coerce confessions from suspects.
The filing was based on a report by a 45-year-old man who was arrested on theft charges. He insisted that he was gagged and had his face wrapped in cellophane during the interrogation.
After having received two more complaints, the NHRC officials met 32 criminal suspects interrogated at the police station from August 2009 through March this year and secured testimonies from 22 confirming the allegation.
The police station had initially denied the claims, threatening to take legal action against the commission if the allegations turn out to be false.
However, the National Police Agency said Sunday that it has also confirmed some excessive suppression to have taken place on the suspects during interrogation.
"The problematic officers said they have forcefully tried to restrain several suspects from harming themselves and that the detainees might have taken it as abuse. The police also said some of them were drug addicts and uncontrollable," an officer said, while announcing separate internal investigation results.
"It is possible that the police may have engaged in torture. However, due to the lack of solid evidence, we will first take a wait-and-see attitude until the prosecution investigation is finished," he added.