Luo Gan Conspires with Shijiazhuang Court to Abuse Power and Turn the Trial of Practitioner Wang Bo into a Show Trial

The case of Wang Bo went to the second round of hearings in Shijiazhuang City on April 27th. Six defence lawyers from Beijing courageously walked out of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) shadow, and bravely pleaded not guilty for the family of Wang Bo. This drew wide attention from international society.

These six defence lawyers came from four law firms in Beijing, and they are: Li Heping, Li Xiongbing, Zhang Lihui, Li Shunzhang, Teng Biao, Wu Hongwei. From the aspects of legislation, justice and law enforcement, they presented facts and evidence supporting the not guilty plea. They pointed out 13 incidences of authorities violating legal procedures, and submitted supplementary defence statements.

On May 14th, Lu Ling, the head judge of Wang Bo's case went to Beijing to review progress with higher authorities. On May 16th, the infamous Luo Gan, the CCP's Political and Judicial Committee Secretary, personally traveled to Shijiazhuang City to monitor the situation. The judges for Wang Bo's haven't been around since. On May 21st, Wang Bo's relatives went to a middle-level court to ask for Wang's conditional release. Judge Lu Ling said that the second round of hearings had already concluded and the case was returned to the primary court. She also said that anything related to this case, including conditional release, should be redirected to the primary court. When Wang Bo's family asked her why the lawyers were not notified, Lu Ling evaded the question.

The judge of the primary court in Changan District later said that the case had not been returned to the primary court since the primary court did not have the authority to make a decision in this case. The conclusion had already been made to maintain the original sentence, and he said that the defendants had been notified. Wang Bo's relatives called the detention centre, and they were told detention centre had received no such notice.

None of the six lawyers had received any notice, either. The judge was unable to be reached by phone for follow up later. The lawyers considered Shijiazhuang Middle-level Court's procedures were violating the law. The result of the second round of hearings must be released, with both defendants and lawyers notified, be it correcting the original sentence, maintaining the original sentence, or sending the case back to primary court for re-hearing. They could not just shirk responsibilities like this.

The primary hearing of Wang Bo's case had numerous problems: unclear statement of facts, insufficient evidence, procedures violating the law, improper law enforcement. These drew wide attention from overseas media. The second round of hearings did not correct the previous mistakes, and even went worse, for example, presenting flyers which did not belong to the case files as material evidence.

The second round of hearings needs to correct the primary hearing's mistakes, and the innocent Wang Bo's family of three needs to be released unconditionally. Shijiazhuang City middle-level court is shirking its responsibilities, ignoring lawyers' justified defence, paying no attention to social consequences, and openly violating the law in the face of evidence full of flaws. The court does this to please high ranking CCP officials. Doing so means the CCP once again exposes its vicious nature to the world. In fact, this so-called hearing of Falun Gong practitioners is just a show trial, framing practitioners. It uses the pretence of law to cover up the brutal persecution of good-hearted citizens. Needlessly to say, this is another example of the CCP's true nature.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2007/5/24/155481.html