Foxconn employee committed suicide over iPhone leak interrogations?

Rumors are swelling that some parties may have taken Apple's secrecy policy to the extreme, causing one 25-year-old employee at Foxconn, the manufacturing company for the iPhone, to commit suicide.

According to ND Daily, Sun Danyong, who had been handling a shipment of 16 iPhone prototypes, was set upon by Foxconn's Central Security Division after one of the prototypes went missing. Unable to take the "unbearable interrogation techniques," he jumped from a 12-story building on July 16.

Foxconn has already issued a statement apologizing for the incident and admitting that ah section chief of the Central Security Division, surnamed Gu, may have used "inappropriate interrogation methods" such as searching Sun's house, holding Sun in solitary confinement and possibly beatings. Gu has been suspended without pay and the company is internally investigating the Central Security Division.

Sun's classmates (he had just graduated from university and joined Foxconn in 2008), said that before his suicide, he had talked to them about the interrogation techniques Foxconn's security guys had used - including "laying hands" on him, though he did not specify how.

Security officers that worked with Gu argued that it was unlikely - the security office is one large room staffed by 60 to 70 people. While Sun had been taken behind a screen that obscured the rest of the room's view, witnesses would have been able to hear if he had been beaten.

But one of Sun's friends contended that he had never been a liar, and besides, "the man had decided to die. It's not like he would tell lies right before he did."

Foxconn spokesperson Li Jinming told reporters "regardless of the reason of Sun's suicide, it is to some extent a reflection of Foxconn's internal management deficiencies, especially in how to help young workers cope with the psychological pressures of working life at the company."

Photo from Ars Technica