Pro-democracy activist Ken Tsang Kin-chiu, who accused seven police officers of beating him up during the 2014 Occupy protests, pleaded not guilty to charges of assaulting policemen.
On the first day of hearing of the case on Monday, Tsang, 40, denied a charge of assaulting police officers and four charges of resisting arrest on Oct. 15, 2014, the same day when seven police officers were caught on video beating him up in a dark corner near the main Occupy protest site in Admiralty, Apple Daily reports.
The prosecution told the Eastern Magistrates’ Court that Tsang, a Civic Party member, assaulted 11 police officers on the day by splashing some kind of fluid on them on Lung Wo Road, before later resisting arrest by four other officers.
One of the officers said the fluid smelled like urine but the police never sent it for laboratory test, the newspaper quoted a source as saying.
Defense counsel Robert Pang Yiu-hung did not dispute the content of the two video clips aired previously by Asia Television (ATV) and presented as evidence by prosecutor Leung Cheuk-yin, who downloaded them from the ATV website.
But Pang questioned the source of the videos, noting that the prosecution failed to summon ATV staff to confirm their authenticity.
Leung said the two videos taken separately by the police and ATV show the accused wearing the same clothes and the testimony from police officers at the scene was consistent with what is seen in the videos, Ming Pao Daily reports.
Magistrate Law Tak-chuen then decided to first clear the issue of whether the videos could be used as evidence.
Police Sergeant Butt Wang-tat testified that he saw a man about to throw a bottle full of fluid along Lung Wo Road and the two grappled with each other as Butt tried to stop him.
Another police sergeant said he warned the suspect to stop what he was trying to do, but the man ignored him. The sergeant then used pepper spray on his face.
The trial continues on Tuesday.
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