(Minghui.org) New evidence: A hole was found pierced in the cap of a water bottle that was offered to a defendant during the trial of two Falun Gong practitioners on February 13, 2015. A person in the judicial profession said that similar things had occurred in other trials. The practitioners being tried behaved as if they had been drugged and did not even recognize their family members.
Here is a recap of the situation. Practitioners Mr. Guan Rian and Mr. Zhang Yutang were tried in the Aimin District Court in Mudanjiang, Heilongjiang Province, on February 13, 2015.
When Mr. Zhang was reading his defense statement, Judge Ji Ming had someone give him a bottle of water. After drinking it, Mr. Zhang developed slurred speech, dizziness, confusion, and a severe headache.
When the court adjourned for lunch, the other practitioner, Mr. Guan, walked out of the courtroom. When he returned in the afternoon, he was in a wheelchair. He was holding his head awry and seemed feeble. He looked as if he was in a sort of coma. Judge Ji Ming announced that his not responding to the court's questions was admitting his guilt.
Some observers said the two defendants were very likely drugged.
Mr. Zhang and Mr. Guan were arrested in April 2014 for practicing Falun Gong.
Aimin Court Hands Falun Gong Practitioners Heavy Sentences
The Aimin District Court has illegally sentenced hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners since the Chinese communist regime started persecuting Falun Gong in July 1999. Some practitioners have died in prison, some left behind infants without support, and others had parents pass away out of grief. Several examples are listed below.
Mr. Wang Jiguo was tortured in a forced labor camp. As a result, he suffered from blood in the urine and almost lost sight in both of his eyes. Despite his condition, the Aimin Court sentenced him to seven years in prison in 2001. He died at the age of 40 in September 2003 in Mudanjiang Prison. His wife was sentenced to three years in a forced labor camp. Their child was just seven years old at the time.
Mr. Yu Zhonghai worked in art at the Mudanjiang Cultural Affairs Department Library. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2001. Ms. Wang Meihong, his wife and a senior engineer in the Geological Survey Institution, was sentenced to an 11-year prison term in March 2004, and his sisters were repeatedly harassed and detained. Helpless, his father could only watch when his children were treated unjustly and died of a broken heart.
Mr. Jin Youfeng was an instructor at Mudanjiang Teachers College. In 2003 the court sentenced him and his wife to more than ten years in prison. Officers threatened to send their children, one 9 and one 14 months, to an orphanage. Mr. Jin's mother suffered from overwhelming distress and died of grief. Mr. Jin was brutally beaten and force-fed in prison, and he died from tuberculosis on January 20, 2009.
The court sentenced Mr. Lin Lixin to a ten-year prison term in early 2003. The prison refused to admit Mr. Li because he had been tortured and was near death. The court had agents monitor and track him.
The court did not follow legal procedures. It secretly sentenced a dozen practitioners to between 5 and 15 years in prison in April 2003. Among them were Ms. Xiao Shufen, who died in the Harbin Women's Prison on June 8, 2006, and Mr. Xu Fuzhi, who died in the Mudanjiang Detention Center in May 2004.
Ms. Chen Jinfeng was sentenced twice by the Aimin Court. She was first sentenced in September 2004. When she was released in 2008, she was in critical condition. A year later, in August 2009, she was sentenced to six years in prison.
Without their families being notified, as is required by law, Mr. Sun Fa was sentenced to four years and Mr. Gong Chengge to four-and-a-half years at a detention center on February 4, 2013.
While Ms. Han Xiufang and Ms. Liu Chunlan were facing trial in April 2013, the court twice canceled the trial right before it was about to start. After the second cancellation, once their lawyer left, the court handed down the sentence.
Earlier report:Court Suspected of Drugging Defendants During Trial
