(Minghui.org) Following their arrests on July 22, 2016, twelve Falun Gong practitioners from Fushun, Liaoning Province have been kept in custody at Nangou Detention Center for more than 2 years without trial.
After the Dongzhou District Procuratorate returned their cases to the police twice due to insufficient evidence, they accepted them upon the police’s third attempt and forwarded them to Dongzhou District Court in March 2017.
Judge Tian Hao from Dongzhou District Court held two pretrial meetings with the practitioners’ lawyers on April 25 and June 8, 2017. But instead of proceeding with the joint trial of the practitioners, he split it into individual cases and assigned them to nearby courts, including Wanghua District Court, Qingyuan County Court and Fushun County Court.
Meanwhile, many of the practitioners’ lawyers, including Yu Wensheng, Cheng Hai, Wen Donghai, Wu Li, Li Ming, Zhang Keke, Xiong Dongmei and Qi Qilei, were denied the right to represent and defend them by the local authorities.
On August 2, 2018, the lawyers for Lu Qing, Li Yanrong and Li Gang, whose cases remained at Dongzhou District Court, attended another pretrial meeting. Details of the meeting are not available at the time of writing.
The twelve practitioners are: Lu Qing, Li Yanrong, Li Gang, Xu Guirong, Zhang Guiping, Hu Fengqiu, Liu Fengjuan, Li Mingyun, Qin Zengyun, Pan Fude, Dong Weirong, and Jiang Shun’ai.
Their families have filed a complaint against Judge Tian Hao for holding the practitioners beyond the legally permissible term.
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