A court in the southern city of Guangzhou sentenced a transit station worker to death and a policeman and others to prison in the fatal beating of a young man who was detained for lacking a residence permit.

　　The Guangzhou First People's Court sentenced Qiao Yanqin for deliberately harming Sun Zhigang, Xinhua news agency reported yesterday. News reports last week said Qiao told subordinates and other detainees held at the station to beat Sun because he annoyed her with his shouting.

　　Trials for 18 defendants in three separate courts in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong Province, began last Thursday and it wasn't clear when they finished.

　　Li Haiying, who led the beating, was given a death sentence suspended for two years, Xinhua said. Ten others who joined in the beating were sentenced to between three years and life in prison.

　　Six other defendants, including a policeman at the station that sent Sun to the detention center, were jailed two to three years for negligence.

　　Sun, 27, died on April 20, three days after being detained. Despite police claims that he died of a heart attack, an autopsy found he was savagely punched and kicked and likely died of internal bleeding.

　　Sun, from central Hubei Province, worked for a garment company in Guangzhou but lacked permission to live there under the registration system.

　　Although millions of Chinese now move around the country in search of work, the system still requires them to apply for permission to live in a new location.

　　The eight detainees charged in Sun's killing said they were forced by the transit center staff to beat him and had previously suffered beatings themselves.

　　Almost two dozen officials have also been expelled from the Communist Party or given other forms of administrative punishment for negligence or improper handling of the case.