Practitioners Song Zhiyu and Wang Yaheng Sent to Prison, Their Attorneys Beaten and Arrested

Mr. Song Zhiyu from Hebei Province and Mr. Wang Yaheng from Inner Mongolia were recently each sentenced to three and a half years in prison and sent to the Baoanzhao Prison in Xingan Meng, Inner Mongolia. In order to prevent their attorneys from defending them, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) police beat the attorneys and arrested them before the hearings.

Mr. Song, 40, old lives in Qinghuangdao, Hebei Province. Mr. Wang, 40, came from Hailar District, Hulunber, Inner Mongolia. The two practitioners were arrested by Zhang Xuzeng and other officers from the Hailar Domestic Security Division on December 8th and 10th, 2010, respectively. It was said that the reason for the arrests was that the two practitioners exposed the arrest of practitioners by the Hailar Domestic Security Division on the Minghui website (Chinese version of Clearwisdom.net). Mr. Wang was brutally tortured. Both practitioners were taken to the Hulunber Detention Centre.

During their detention, the families of the two practitioners hired attorneys from Beijing to defend them. On the night before the first court hearing (late on the night of April 13th, 2011) two strangers broke into the hotel rooms where the attorneys were staying and beat them. The intruders grabbed the attorneys' documents, computers, mobile phones, and shoes, which suggests that someone wanted to stop the attorneys from appearing in court.

A second court session was scheduled at 2:30 p.m. on May 17th, 2011. Just before the court was to convene, Zhang Xuzeng and other officers from the Hailar Domestic Security Division arrested the two attorneys in public in front of the Hailar Court in Hulunber. When the hearing began, the judge immediately sentenced both practitioners to three and half years in prison. The families of the two practitioners filed appeals and the attorneys also requested another hearing several times, but the appeals were dismissed with no further hearings granted. Mr. Song and Mr. Wang have been sent to the Baoanzhao Prison in Xinganmeng, Inner Monoglia.

Chinese version available at http://minghui.ca/mh/articles/2012/1/6/251514.html