China verdict on dissident Hu Jia due Thursday: lawyer
BEIJING (AFP) — The verdict for prominent Chinese human rights dissident Hu Jia, accused of subversion, will be announced on Thursday, one of his lawyers said.
"We hope Hu Jia will be freed. But we are not optimistic," lawyer Li Fangping told AFP on Monday after being informed by the court of the verdict date.
Li said the majority of such cases ended in a guilty verdict, adding that Hu could be sentenced to over five years in prison.
Hu's case has drawn much international attention, with critics of China saying his detention and trial is part of a crackdown to silence dissent ahead of the Beijing Olympics in August.
The case has violated promises to improve human rights that China made to win the right to host the Games, critics say, although Premier Wen Jiabao recently denied there was any such crackdown to silence dissidents.
Yang Chunlin, another human rights activist, was last week given a maximum five years in jail for subversion after he organised a petition with 10,000 signatures that said: "We want human rights, not the Olympics."
Hu, 34, is facing subversion charges for political articles he posted on overseas websites and for interviews he gave to the foreign press in China. He initially rose to prominence as a campaigner for the rights of AIDS sufferers.
The verdict in his case will be read out at the Beijing No 1 Intermediate People's Court, following a one-day trial there last week.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice raised Hu's case during a visit to Beijing in February, while the European Parliament has passed a resolution calling for his release.
Hu's wife, Zeng Jinyan, has been under house arrest since Hu was arrested in December last year.
Zeng, a prominent activist in her own right and a mother of a newborn child, has been a prolific Internet blogger, documenting a wide range of rights violations in China and the government's attempt to whitewash them.
