2014-08-27
Ilham Tohti in Beijing, August 2012.
Photo courtesy of Ilham Tohti
Chinese authorities in the troubled northwestern region of Xinjiang have moved a step closer to trying detained Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti for “separatism,” with a pretrial hearing scheduled for next month, his lawyer said on Wednesday.
“They told me a pretrial hearing will take place on Sept. 7,” Liu Xiaoyuan, a member of Tohti’s defense team, told RFA.
“Originally it was scheduled for Sept. 5, but there was a clash with another case that [fellow defense lawyer] Li Fangping is working on, so it’s been moved to the morning of Sept. 7,” he said.
He said Tohti, who was detained in January, would likely attend the hearing in person, but that the hearing and the trial itself were likely to be behind closed doors.