Ni yulan trial

Their daughter, Dong Xuan, said seeing her mother lying on a bed in court "made her heart ache". The trial had been "a very abnormal legal process" and she believed that there was "a very big chance she will be found guilty", said Ms Dong, according to AFP.

The trial was closed to the press and foreign diplomats. The couple's lawyer Cheng Hai said outside the court that no verdict had been reached, and it was unclear when one would be announced.

This week two other Chinese dissidents, Chen Xi and Chen Wei, were both sentenced for subversion, receiving ten-year and nine-year sentences respectively. The BBC's Damian Grammaticas, who is in Beijing, says that the Chinese Communist Party is due to undergo a change in its senior leaders next year and is thought to be extremely sensitive about any challenges to its rule.

Ni and her husband were peacefully engaged in activities protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders. Their convictions and sentencing under the authority of Article can only be considered arbitrary and illegitimate. Ni Yulan and her husband are known as courageous, principled, and conscientious lawyers who have insisted on fulfilling their ethical obligations to their clients.

They have been persecuted, tortured, and imprisoned in truth for no other reason than the fact that they have defended clients whom the CCP wanted to go undefended. We have received reports indicating that Ni Yulan has been malnourished in prison. Ni Yulan suffers from respiratory, heart and digestive problems, and cannot walk because of previous police torture. This is because of internal remarks recently attributed to you in the wake of the revelations surrounding Bo Xilai, Zhou Yongkang, and Wang Lijun.

Redress for the torture and illegal imprisonment of Ni Yulan and her husband would constitute an excellent starting point. Her family's house in an old neighbourhood in the capital's centre was also razed, and the couple became homeless.

In a sign of the government's sensitivity over the case, the trial took place under heavy security as dozens of uniformed police sealed off and patrolled roads around the courthouse, rounding up journalists and taking them to a small office away from the building. About a dozen diplomats from the US, the UK, Germany and other European countries came to the court and police moved them indoors. Ni told the court she was not guilty, said her lawyer Cheng Hai, outside the courthouse.

Cheng spoke only briefly as he was being pushed away from reporters by plainclothes men who did not identify themselves. Dong said she was happy to see her parents for the first time in the nearly nine months that they have been detained but her mother had visibly weakened. Ni has been jailed repeatedly by Chinese authorities, first in and again in after she defended the rights of residents evicted from their homes to make way for the Beijing Olympics. Chinese rights lawyer Ni Yulan placed under house arrest.

Chinese lawyer Ni Yulan in Beijing in