May 27, 2008
Today’s Information Times reports about the trial in Guangzhou’s High Court of two people alleged to have attempted to rob Li Ka-shing’s late wife’s grave. The trial is being presided over by a judge from Hong Kong whom the newspaper identifies as Judge White. A judge from Guangdong Province is also at the court as a witness.
The whole trial is going to last five days and will be videotaped for a jury in Hong Kong to make a verdict. Due to the language barrier, an interpreter was assigned to help Judge White who is apparently English-speaking.
The grave robbery happened on January 29, 2006. A Hong Kong cemetery caretaker and his wife found four men digging the grave of Chong Yuet-ming, Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing’s late wife.
After being discovered, the gang attacked and robbed the caretaker and his wife, and fled. Five suspects, of them three were Hong Kong residents, were later arrested by Hong Kong police. Two brothers surnamed Liu confessed to the police that they were planning to extort money from Li Ka-shing using his wife’s bones, but the principal defendant surnamed Wang denied the charge. Lack of evidence handicapped the prosecutor’s effort to build an extortion case against the suspects.
In 2007, another three suspects involved in the crime were arrested in Guangdong Province by Mainland police and found guilty of robbery by a Guangzhou district court. The three provided evidence against the five suspects who had earlier been arrested by Hong Kong police but under the Hong Kong legal system, evidence obtained by Mainland authorities is not admissible. The Mainland denied Hong Kong’s request to send the three to Hong Kong for a trial, so the Hong Kong courts hoped to solve the problem by sending their own judge to Mainland.
According to the newspaper article, this is the first time that a Hong Kong judge has presided over legal case in a Mainland court and it poses a new opportunity for Hong Kong and mainland China to further their legal cooperation.
- Netease (Chinese): Failed grave robbery has a new trial in Guangzhou