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Charged with murder, husband and wife denied visits from their lawyer

Posted by on 2014/10/18. Filed under Breaking News,China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

(BOXUN) Jiaozuo City, Henan Province: Petitioners Xu Youchen and his wife Zhang Xiaoyu are charged with the intentional assassination of a police officer. Their attorney, Liu Shuqing, said that on Tuesday October 14, 2014 he went to the detention center to apply for a visit but the door guard wouldn’t let him in. After he complained to the detention center leadership, he was told that a visit wasn’t permitted. But he continued to appeal this decision as illegal. The next day, he and attorney Liu Jinbin went to the detention center together, but the door guard still wouldn’t let them in. They were finally permitted to enter and register for a visit, but the detention center refused the meeting, demanding that the attorneys confirm their identity with the court. The attorneys demanded to see the administrative decision that states that an attorney can’t see their detained client. At this point several police officers came over and treated the attorneys roughly. They then left.

Yesterday attorney Liu Shuqing filed a complaint of this unlawful action to the Shangyang District Court. The court will decide within five days whether to consider the complaint .

On July 17, 2014, Xu Youchen and Zhang Xiaoyu were petitioning in Beijing when they were apprehended and forced to return to Jiaozuo, Henan. While at a local police station, officer Wang Jun’gan was stabbed to death by Xu Youchen. For this reason both husband and wife are now charged in a capital criminal case of intentionally assassinating a police officer. On August 2, 2014 the procuratorate formally issued their arrest warrant.

(Copy editor’s comments: Chinese emperors allowed people with grievances to appeal to them for help if local officials didn’t resolve complaints. This tradition continues in the form of Bureaus for Letters and Calls, which are supposd to receive petitioners’ complaints and send them to the proper government departments for review. In reality, however, petitioners who dare travel to the national bureau in Beijing often are detained and shipped back to their hometowns, where they often are punished for the potential embarrassment they might have caused by complaining about local officials.

Procuratorates in China are similar to states’ attorneys in the U.S. They are public prosecutors representing the state.)

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