\nBEIJING (AP) \u2013 A Chinese court sentenced a Chinese-American businessman on Thursday to 20 years in prison on charges of heading a mob that kidnapped rivals and operated illegal casinos, and rejected his claim that he was tortured by police.<\/p>\n
\tThe Guangzhou Intermediate People\u2019s Court said in a statement on its microblog that Vincent Wu operated illegal casinos that raked in 48 million yuan ($7.8 million), got an associate to throw acid at a judge who ruled against him in a lawsuit and ordered thugs to set fire to sheds owned by farmers who refused his offer of compensation to clear off land he wanted to develop.<\/p>\n
\tAbout two dozen other defendants in the case received sentences of between 19 months and 19 years. Many of the defendants declared in court that they had been tortured by police \u2013 deprived of sleep or beaten \u2013 into confessing to assault, kidnapping and other violent crimes. About 20 of them recanted their confessions.<\/p>\n
\tWu\u2019s daughter, Anna Wu, and lawyer Wang Shihua said the sentence was unjust and excessive and that Wu would appeal. Wu\u2019s family says he\u2019s a law-abiding businessman whose rivals have framed him to seize his assets.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWe\u2019re very devastated, of course, because we did not expect it to be that bad, given that so many of the defendants said they had been tortured,\u201d Anna Wu said by phone. \u201cNo matter how many times we need to appeal, we will, until my dad is proven innocent.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tChina\u2019s leaders and its highest court have pledged to curtail miscarriages of justice that commonly occur because of the illegal use of torture to obtain confessions.<\/p>\n
\tSuch abuses are a focal point of public anger at the legal system and the Communist Party that controls it. Earlier this week, three police officers were found guilty of torturing a suspect in a southwest Chinese city but handed lenient sentences, sparking a flurry of criticism on Chinese social media.<\/p>\n
\tWu\u2019s lawyers saw the gang trial as a test case for determining to what extent a court would comply with the leadership in fully investigating allegations of torture \u2013 and throwing out evidence illegally obtained from using it.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cThis trial has made a joke of the law,\u201d said Wang, adding that police had refused to provide video and audio recordings of their interrogations of Wu. \u201cIs this called a trial?\u201d<\/p>\n
\tChinese media cited a police officer who testified by videoconference as saying police could not produce the recordings because the hard disk they were on had a virus.<\/p>\n
\tThe court refused to let the defense lawyers call many witnesses to the stand, Anna Wu said, while prosecutors and the judge repeatedly interrupted the defense attorneys, prompting many of the lawyers to stage a walkout in protest. The court carried on with the trial despite their absence.<\/p>\n
\tWu told his lawyers he had been beaten, kicked and strung by his arms from a ceiling beam as police tried to force him to sign a confession. One other defendant alleged that police applied electric shocks to his genitals. Others said they were suspended by their wrists from high places.<\/p>\n
\tPolice in nearby Huizhou city, where the interrogations were carried out, denied the allegations.<\/p>\n
\tWu left China in the late 1970s as a stowaway to neighboring Hong Kong, where he obtained residency. He moved with his family to the U.S. in 1994, settled in Los Angeles and eventually became a U.S. citizen.<\/p>\n
\tHe has been denied U.S. consular access since his detention in June 2012 despite being a U.S. passport holder who shuttles between his family in Los Angeles and his business in China.<\/p>\n
\tThe court said he was tried as a Chinese citizen because he last entered the mainland on his Hong Kong residence permit and China doesn\u2019t recognize dual citizenship.<\/p>\n
\tU.S. Embassy spokesman Nolan Barkhouse said that aside from the first day of court proceedings in early February, Chinese authorities refused to allow American consular officers to attend the trial, which concluded in early April.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWe believe that our consular officers should be permitted access, which is why we\u2019ve requested access 11 times,\u201d Barkhouse said.<\/p>\n
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BEIJING (AP) \u2013 A Chinese court sentenced a Chinese-American businessman on Thursday to 20 years in prison on charges of heading a mob that kidnapped rivals and operated illegal casinos, and rejected his claim that he was tortured by police….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-casino-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7412\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumarchives.tmsites.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}