Ken Tsang arrest footage doesn’t tell full story, Hong Kong court told
As prosecution makes case for admitting the televised images at trial of seven police officers, defence questions their authenticity
Witnesses in the case of seven police officers charged with assaulting activist Ken Tsang Kin-chiu during the Occupy protests in 2014 conceded on Friday that news footage didn’t tell the full story of what happened that night.
Two police officers, testifying for the prosecution against their colleagues, made the concession to the District Court, where prosecutors have tried to submit a series of videos from different sources leading up to the alleged attack as evidence.
But defence lawyers objected, saying the authenticity of the footage – from TVB, ATV, Now TV and Apple Daily – could not be verified and that it could have been tampered with.
But despite the concessions, the witnesses confirmed that the news footage matched their recollections of events. Staff from the TV stations also testified that the footage in question was free from tampering.
Chief inspector Wong Cho-shing, 48, senior inspector Lau Cheuk-ngai, 29, detective sergeant Pak Wing-bun, 42, and constables Lau Hing-pui, 38, Chan Siu-tan, 31, Kwan Ka-ho, 32, and Wong Wai-ho, 36, deny one joint count of causing grievous bodily harm with intent against Tsang on October 15, 2014. They allegedly assaulted Tsang at a pump station near Lung Wui Road.
Chan also denies one lesser charge of common assault.
The seven have been wearing identical ties and suits to court over the past three days, in an apparent attempt to make them harder to distinguish. The court heard earlier that identity would be a key issue in the trial.
In court on Friday, when a piece of ATV footage of Tsang’s arrest was shown to senior inspector Wat Chin-cheuk, he identified himself in it and said it was consistent with his recollection.
Defence counsel Cheng Huan SC asked him if the footage gave “an incomplete picture of what happened”. He said: “I agree.”
Station sergeant Cheng Ho-cheung also identified himself in the video, but conceded that his participation in subduing Tsang, who he described as “a man in his black upper garment”, lasted about five minutes, while the shown footage ran only about a minute. The sergeant went on and said the subdued man was handed to other officers from a crime team.
Former ATV senior video editor Chim Yat-kin, who explained how videos were backed up by the network, said the device used for conversion had no other function. He also said his team would only process footage, not produce new footage.
Shum Ka-hung, a senior technician at TVB, recalled the signal was normal when real-time footage was transmitted from two cameramen on the ground to his control room.
His colleague Lam Ka-yu, senior staff at the station’s footage library, said he believed footage had not been tampered with before he burned it onto a disc from a server.
The case continues before judge David Dufton on Monday, when Tsang is expected to testify.
