Ex-Official’s Drive in China Leads to Torture Inquiry（Excerpt）

• Author: Edward Wong

CHONGQING, China — Police officers here are being investigated over whether they used torture and other questionable methods to obtain evidence during a so-called anticrime campaign overseen by Bo Xilai, the deposed Chinese leader who for four years ran the party machinery in this fog-shrouded western metropolis.

The review of police actions was revealed in interviews with a lawyer in Beijing and a person in Chongqing with ties to police officials. .

The investigation, which has not been previously disclosed, formally began April 25, when Liu Guanglei, a top Chongqing party official in charge of the politics and law committee, said at a gathering of mid- and senior-level police officials that any officer who had tortured suspects during Mr. Bo’s campaign should admit to doing so. Mr. Liu told the group that if an officer were found later to have committed torture but had not been forthcoming, then the officer would be severely punished, according to the person with police ties, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the scandal surrounding Mr. Bo.

Mr. Bo’s campaign, called “strike black” or “smash the black,” was rolled out in June 2009 to great fanfare and engineered by Wang Lijun, a police officer from northeast China whom Mr. Bo had installed as the police chief here after he became party secretary in late 2007. Mr. Bo and Mr. Wang said the campaign was aimed at destroying crime gangs and their supporters in Chongqing, but critics and some people convicted during that time say the campaign was at least partly a cover to tear down Mr. Bo’s enemies and undermine private entrepreneurs.

But any inquiry into Mr. Bo’s actions before he was removed from his party chief post in Chongqing in March and suspended from the 25-member Politburo in April could become a tricky issue for senior party officials. Though Mr. Bo is being investigated by Beijing for “serious disciplinary violations,” officials looking specifically at the anticrime crackdown must tread carefully because several of China’s top leaders made a trip to Chongqing around the time of the campaign and publicly praised Mr. Bo for his efforts.

Xi Jinping, the vice president who is expected to replace Hu Jintao as the president of China, praised the crackdown and toured a museum exhibition dedicated to the campaign when he visited Chongqing in December 2010, according to a report at the time by Xinhua, the state news agency. The report has since been...