MCLC: torturers now the hunted

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Jacqueline Winter  (dujuan99 at gmail.com
Subject: torturers now the hunted
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Source: South China Morning Post (4/30/12):
http://www.scmp.com/portal/site/SCMP/menuitem.2af62ecb329d3d7733492d9253a0a
0a0/?vgnextoid=d4f24f625cef6310VgnVCM100000360a0a0aRCRD&ss=China&s=News

Torturers now the hunted, ex-lawyer says
Legal counsel jailed in triad crackdown says Chongqing law enforcement
officers will be punished and dozens have already been detained
By Choi Chi-yuk in Xian

Chongqing authorities plan to punish law enforcers linked to the use of
torture to extract confessions during a sweeping triad crackdown initiated
by former municipal Communist Party secretary Bo Xilai, according to
former lawyer Li Zhuang.

"Relevant departments have urged Chongqing police officers who were
involved in the extortion of evidence to report as soon as possible to the
party what they did during the triad crackdown," said Li, who was once
jailed while representing a man later convicted of being a crime boss in
the municipality.

He was speaking during an informal legal group discussion on Saturday
night in Xian, the capital of Shaanxi province.

"In my opinion, it is no different from calling on those police officers
to turn themselves in, though they do not put it that way," he said.

Li was jailed and stripped of his licence to practise law after being
convicted in February 2010 of fabricating evidence while representing
"triad boss" Gong Gangmo in Chongqing. Li was released in June last year.

Li said dozens of law enforcers, including from the police, prosecution
department and courts, had been detained in a new round of investigations.

"The authorities in Chongqing will in May and July continue rounding up
the supervisors of those police officers who have already been put under
investigation," he added, referring to what he suspected would be two
rounds of detentions in those months.

More than 100 lawyers, legal scholars, entrepreneurs and journalists from
across the country attended the informal meeting in Xian late on Saturday
night. A 1-1/2-day forum - the second public conference to be addressed by
Li after his release from jail - had been under way on Saturday, but was
cancelled around noon that day under pressure from authorities and
replaced with the much shorter informal meeting that night.

The forum had been organised by the Lawyer College of Beijing-based Renmin
University, a law firm and the publisher of Democracy and Legal System, a
magazine affiliated with semi-official China Law Society.

But instead, the participants held the informal discussion and voiced
their concerns about the current judicial environment. Prominent legal
practitioners Professor He Weifang, Chen Youxi, Professor Tong Zhiwei, Si
Weijiang and Zhou Ze were among the attendees and speakers at the
four-hour discussion.

During the informal meeting, lawyer Zhu Mingyong gave an account of his
ordeal. He spent months as a fugitive after he posted a video online in
July 2010 showing the fresh wounds on his client, Fan Qihan, who was later
executed after being convicted as a triad boss.

It was the first time Zhu had spoken publicly since posting the
controversial video - which was meant to be shown as evidence that torture
was used on alleged triad members detained during the massive crackdown
that began in June 2009.
Zhu said several task forces were set up after the video went public and
he was hunted down by Chongqing police.

But Zhu said he recently received a message from Chongqing police via a
middleman asking for his understanding.

"The Public Security Bureau in Chongqing earlier asked the husband of one
of my friends to pass a message on to me that they did not mean to target
and harass me then," said Zhu, adding that "they said they were assigned
to do so".