Defence lawyer asks Hong Kong court to pull plug on sedition trial of 2 ex-chiefs of Stand News
- Defence team says prosecution broke court rules by failure to disclose six boxes of evidence
- One former editor of online news site released on bail after 11 months behind bars on sedition charge
One of two former editors of the now-closed Stand News website secured bail on Monday after the pair requested a permanent stay of proceedings in their trial for sedition on the grounds of a violation of Hong Kong’s prosecution rules.
Former acting editor-in-chief Patrick Lam Shiu-tung, 35, was granted bail at the District Court on Monday after a lawyer for him and his predecessor, 53-year-old former editor-in-chief Chung Pui-kuen, applied for the trial to be terminated.
Senior counsel Audrey Eu Yuet-mee, for the defence, said on Monday prosecutors had failed to disclose six boxes of unused documentary evidence amounting to more than 1,500 pages until their existence was revealed during the cross-examination of a police witness last week.
“Not only did the prosecution contravene the prosecution code, which requires the submission of all of its evidence to us, it also went against the court’s direction in the pretrial stage … This situation is not of our own making,” Eu said.
District Judge Kwok Wai-kin, one of the few jurists hand-picked by the city’s leader to oversee national security cases, said the defence should be given sufficient time to prepare submissions in light of “a change of circumstances”.