NYT researcher trial in China expected by March

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) – The trial of a Chinese researcher
charged with exposing state secrets while working for the New
York Times is expected before the end of March, his lawyer said
on Wednesday.

Zhao Yan worked for the paper before his arrest in
September 2004. He faces 10 years in jail or more after
security officials charged him with telling the paper details
of rivalry between China’s outgoing Communist Party leader,
Jiang Zemin, and new leader Hu Jintao.

“The court should hear the case and hand down an initial
verdict before March 20, though the date has not been set for
sure,” Zhao’s lawyer, Mo Shaoping, told reporters in Beijing.

Mo said that represented a delay of one month, after the
court decided to postpone proceedings to give it more time to
subpoena witnesses and re-examine evidence at the request of
the defense.

Zhao, 43, worked as a muck-raking reporter for Chinese
publications, often exposing official corruption and abuse of
farmers, before he joined the Times. He won the Reporters
Without Borders 2005 prize in December for journalists who have
“shown a strong commitment to press freedom.”

His arrest was the most prominent of a series of jailings
of Chinese reporters that have stoked international criticism
of the country’s media controls.

Last April, China arrested Ching Cheong, a Hong Kong-based
reporter for Singapore’s Straits Times, on spying charges. The
same month, a Chinese reporter, Shi Tao, was sentenced to 10
years in jail for “revealing state secrets” after he sent
propaganda department directives to an overseas Web site.

Zhao also faces a lesser charge of fraud.

SENSITIVE CASES

His lawyer is well-known for taking up sensitive political
cases that other attorneys are loath to touch, such as those
involving people who took part in the 1989 pro-democracy
protests in Tiananmen Square bloodily put down by the army.

Though most cases he accepts are judged guilty in a country
with no independent judiciary and where the courts hand down
decisions mandated by the government, Mo is undeterred.

“In the long term, I think history will be the best judge
of these people,” said Mo, drawing the comparison with Nobel
laureates Nelson Mandela and former South Korea leader Kim
Dae-jung, both of whom spent years in jail.

In China, Mo told the Foreign Correspondents Club, more
than 70 percent of criminal trials do not even have a defense
lawyer present, as lawyers are either scared to take them or
consider the financial reward insufficient.

Police also have the power to search anyone and anywhere
without a warrant and often demand secretaries at law firms
hand over copies of defense materials, he added.

This week, human rights activist John Kamm of the
U.S.-based Dui Hua Foundation said 99 percent of people tried
in China for “endangering state security” were found guilty —
the highest conviction rate of any crime in the country.