ICC Note:
Li Heping’s wife says that although he has technically been released after the trial he has not come home yet. She was given a letter by Chinese officials that was purportedly written by him asking her to come to Tianjin but she rejected the letter as a fake. She also received a phone call from his number in which he said very little but asked her to come to Tianjin. She says that it is a ploy to place their whole family under house arrest in Tianjin and that he won’t be properly released. There people stationed at the front door of her house who are watching her and trying to convince her to go to Tianjin, she said. Christian human rights activist and lawyer, Li Heping was given a suspended jail sentence for four years for subversion of state power. Li was allegedly tortured during his detainment. Li’s case has drawn a lot of attention for his treatment during his detainment and for the religious rights cases that he handled before the trial.
5/1/2017 China (Radio Free Asia) – A court in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin on Friday handed down a three-year suspended jail term to prominent rights lawyer Li Heping after finding him guilty of subversion, but the authorities appear not to have let him go free.
Li was sentenced by the Tianjin No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court, which found him guilty of “subversion of state power” in a trial behind closed doors.
The sentence was suspended for four years. Li was also deprived of his political rights for four years, the court said on its verified Weibo account.
“The court decided not to proceed with an open trial, owing to the fact that the Li Heping case involved state secrets,” it said.
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