Dorbod County Court Framed Mr. Liu Fubin and Created Difficulties for His Defence Lawyers

On January 28th, 2010, the Dorbod County Court in Daqing City, Heilongjiang Province, held the first hearing in the "trial" of Falun Gong practitioner Mr. Liu Fubin. Two lawyers, Mr. Du and Mr. Zhou, spoke in his defence.

Mr. Liu Fubin, 44 years old, is from Taikang Township, the Dorbod Mongolia Ethnic Minority Autonomous County in Daqing City. He was sentenced to three years of forced labour because he told people the facts about Falun Gong.

At noon on July 13th, 2009, Lin Jiawei, a captain of the Dumeng County National Security brigade in Daqing City, led his people and police officers from the community and the head of the Neighbourhood Committee to arrest Mr. Liu. They detained him for six months. Later, he was tried in court. His family didn't resign themselves to the wrongful accusation and thus hired lawyers to defend him.

Taikang Court officials and the procurator used illegal means to create difficulties for the defence lawyers to try to prevent them from getting involved. According to the law, the court has to notify the accused and his lawyers three days ahead of the court session. But Mr. Liu's family and his lawyers received the notice only one day prior. When the lawyers asked the court for the records of indictment, the court refused to provide them. The lawyers told court officials that they could not defend Mr. Liu if the indictment was not produced. The court director thus had to give the lawyers the indictment and allowed them to see Mr. Liu.

The procurator refused to provide the bulk of the records and only gave the lawyers the items the police obtained from searching Mr. Liu's home. When the lawyers asked again for a copy of the records, the staff from the procurator's office said the copier was out of order, so the lawyers were forced to copy it by hand. Not until an hour before the court session did the procurator let the lawyers see the main portion of the records. The lawyers didn't have time to examine the records in detail before hurriedly joining the court session.

During the session, Mr. Liu Fubin calmly pleaded not guilty. His lawyers also defended their client's legal rights and interests according to the law.

The prosecutor charged Liu Fubin with downloading materials from the Minghui/Clearwisdom website and having made more than one thousand Falun Gong CDs, plus having made informational pamphlets and booklets about Falun Gong. The prosecutor repeatedly made a big issue of the materials Mr. Liu had bought and the quantity of the materials and CDs but avoided mentioning the contents of the CDs, pamphlet,s and booklets, which were the key issue of whether Mr. Liu was guilty or not. They did not play a CD or read the materials to the court and even prohibited the lawyers from talking about them.

The defence lawyers pointed out three instances in which the prosecutor violated the law.

Violation of the law regarding procedure: The court didn't notify the accused three days before the court session took place. The accused received notice on the afternoon of January 27th, while the court session was scheduled for January 28th.

The court should have allowed the Falun Gong CDs to be entered as evidence. The lawyers stated that they hadn't seen and didn't know the content of the CDs. If they were being used as evidence, they should have been reviewed by the judicial department to prove that the content was illegal.

There was lack of evidence as to whether Mr. Liu had, in fact, made or distributed Falun Gong material. Even if it were true, it would not have been a violation of the law, as charged by the prosecutor.

Huang Yaodong, head of the Dorbod County Court of Justice: 86-459-3400977 (Office), 86-13704678888 (Mobile)

Zhong Guoqing, Head of the Procuratorate: 86-459-3422402 (Office), 86-13359591001(Mobile)

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2010/2/6/217628.html