Chinese prosecutors deny request to formally arrest trio, including lawyers, on ‘picking quarrels’ charge

Lawyers Nie Min and Zhou Xiaoyun and their client’s son, Teng Ruohan, are free after being accused of spreading misinformation online

In August, Zhou posted a video apparently showing a Panjin prosecutor admitting to procedural errors but it was not among allegations against the men

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Lawyer Zhou Xiaoyun. Although the Panshan procuratorate disallowed formal arrest under the “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” charge, it accused him of interfering with litigation, privately procuring extra fees from Teng Ruohan and tax evasion. Photo: Weibo

Published: 8:01pm, 1 Oct 2021Updated: 9:41pm, 1 Oct 2021

Two defence lawyers and their client’s son have escaped the broadly defined charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” in China’s northeastern Liaoning province after local prosecutors denied a request on Thursday to formally arrest them.

The prosecutor’s office of Panshan county in Panjin refused to allow local police to formally arrest Teng Ruohan and lawyers Nie Min and Zhou Xiaoyun after finding the trio’s alleged spreading of misinformation online was not sufficiently serious, setting them free.

“Although the acts of the three pose certain harm to society, their consequences were not at the level of seriously disrupting public order,” the Panjin procuratorate wrote in a statement on WeChat.

Nie, Zhou and Teng were detained in August on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, an offence often used to stifle dissent. Panjin police said at the time Zhou had produced and spread misinformation online with materials supplied by Nie, and for that he was rewarded by Teng, but did not specify the disseminated information.

The police can restrict a person’s movement before seeking permission from a prosecutor to formally arrest the suspect.

Last year, Nie and investigative journalist-turned-lawyer Zhou represented a group of men, including Teng’s merchant father, who were accused of fraud and falsifying facts in a civil litigation case.

In August, Beijing-based lawyer Wei Rujiu wrote in a widely circulated WeChat post that Zhou and Nie had been detained after the former posted an extract of the official live stream of Teng Snr’s proceedings. The video apparently showed a Panjin prosecutor admitting to procedural errors and that some judges had accepted bribery.

However, the posting of the video clip was not among the alleged misinformation the trio was accused of orchestrating to circulate online, according to the statement issued by the Panjin procuratorate on Thursday.