Localist politician found guilty of rioting
The jury of the High Court in Hong Kong on Friday gave a rioting conviction to high-profile localist politician Edward Leung Tin-kei for participating in the Mong Kok riot in 2016.
The decision was made after a marathon deliberation over 20 hours starting this Wednesday.
The 26-year-old Hong Kong Indigenous member, who earlier pleaded guilty of assaulting a police officer, was ruled guilty of rioting during the conflict between protesters and the police at the night of Feb 8 and in the early hours of Feb 9, 2016, when protesters set fires in the streets and hurled bricks at police in Mong Kok, one of the busiest commercial districts in Hong Kong.
Leung, who was a former candidate for the Legislative Council election, was cleared of incitement to riot.
His co-defendant, Lo Kinman, 31, was also ruled guilty of rioting. Another defendant Lam Lun-hing, 24, was cleared of three counts.
According to Hong Kong’s laws, rioting carries a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment.
The nine-member jury failed to arrive at verdicts for another charge of rioting for Leung and two other defendants — Lee Nok-man, 21 and Lam Ngo-hin, 23 — for their behavior on another street in Mong Kok on the same night.
Leung and Lo will return to court for a mitigation hearing next Monday. A hearing for the undecided charges was scheduled for June 11.
On the same day, the High Court unveiled that it received an email with photos of four of the nine jurors along with potential threat written “there are more”.
To keep the jury from pressure and harassment, Justice Anthea Pang Po-kam afterwards cleared the public from the court room, except for the media covering the case.
The judge also requested the police to escort every juror home and provide 24-hour contact when they left the court.
The police are investigating the case.
The Mong Kok unrest on the first night of the Chinese New Year in 2016 left 130 people injured, including 90 police officers and five journalists, when hundreds of masked protesters hurled bricks pried from the pavement and set fire to rubbish bins and a taxi on the roadside.
About 70 people were detained in connection with the incident; more than 15 have been ruled guilty of rioting and several have been imprisoned.