Nov 19, 2009
Student leader tried for fraud
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<!-- end left side bar --> <!-- story content : start --> BEIJING - AN EXILED former leader of the 1989 student pro-democracy movement went on trial in southwestern China on Thursday on financial fraud charges after being extradited from Hong Kong, a human rights group reported. No verdict was announced at the end of Zhou Yongjun's five-hour hearing in the Sichuan province city of Shehong, Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said. A high-profile figure in the 1989 student-led demonstrations in Beijing that were crushed by the army, Zhou was sent to a mainland Chinese jail in September of last year after attempting to enter Hong Kong from the United States.
Supporters say he was planning on returning to mainland China to visit his elderly parents and accuse Hong Kong's government of violating its own laws in sending him to the mainland. Hong Kong lacks a deportation and removal treaty with mainland China. The human rights group said authorities suspected him of attempting to access funds in a Hong Kong bank account that were frozen after the death of the leader of a meditation group, now banned in China, in a 2006 auto accident in the United States. In its news release, the information center said Zhou had been carrying a fake Malaysian passport that matched a pseudonym used by the deceased leader of the meditation group at the time he was detained. Officials at the Shehong court reached by phone refused to comment or give their names. -- AP
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Student leader tried for fraud
<!-- by line --> <!-- end by line -->
<!-- end left side bar --> <!-- story content : start --> BEIJING - AN EXILED former leader of the 1989 student pro-democracy movement went on trial in southwestern China on Thursday on financial fraud charges after being extradited from Hong Kong, a human rights group reported. No verdict was announced at the end of Zhou Yongjun's five-hour hearing in the Sichuan province city of Shehong, Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said. A high-profile figure in the 1989 student-led demonstrations in Beijing that were crushed by the army, Zhou was sent to a mainland Chinese jail in September of last year after attempting to enter Hong Kong from the United States.
Supporters say he was planning on returning to mainland China to visit his elderly parents and accuse Hong Kong's government of violating its own laws in sending him to the mainland. Hong Kong lacks a deportation and removal treaty with mainland China. The human rights group said authorities suspected him of attempting to access funds in a Hong Kong bank account that were frozen after the death of the leader of a meditation group, now banned in China, in a 2006 auto accident in the United States. In its news release, the information center said Zhou had been carrying a fake Malaysian passport that matched a pseudonym used by the deceased leader of the meditation group at the time he was detained. Officials at the Shehong court reached by phone refused to comment or give their names. -- AP
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