20100122 Chinese court jails exiled dissident

Chinese court jails exiled dissident

AFP , BEIJING
Friday, Jan 22, 2010, Page 5

A former leader of the Tiananmen pro-democracy protests has been jailed for nine years for fraud, after authorities in Hong Kong handed him over to China, his lawyer and a rights group said yesterday.

Zhou Yongjun (周勇軍), a student leader of the 1989 demonstrations that were ended by a bloody army crackdown, was also fined 80,000 yuan (US$11,700) by a county court in Sichuan Province, his lawyer Chen Zerui said.

“The judge only read out the sentence — we are still awaiting the formal written verdict,” Chen said.

“We will appeal,” he added, refusing any further comment on the case, other than expressing the hope that either Zhou’s conviction would be overturned or his sentence reduced on appeal.

Zhou was arrested in Hong Kong in September 2008 and handed over to Chinese police in a case that brought into question the “high degree of autonomy” that Beijing promised the territory upon its 1997 handover from Britain.

The Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said Zhou has been in and out of China since serving two years in prison following the Tiananmen crackdown.

After fleeing to the US, he returned to China in 1998. He was rearrested and sentenced without trial to three years of hard labor.

Upon his release, he again fled to the US, it said.

When arrested in Hong Kong, Zhou was carrying a fake passport and had allegedly tried to receive funds from the Hang Seng Bank under the name given on the false document, the Centre said. His fraud conviction stems from the attempted transaction, it said.

Zhou denied the charge against him, saying he had been the victim of bad luck and mistaken identity, the centre said.

He had been planning to visit his ailing father in Sichuan when he was arrested, it said.

Critics say Zhou’s case should have been tried in Hong Kong where the crime allegedly took place.