Seven people have been cleared of alleged involvement in bomb plots that originated during the protests and unrest in 2019, following a trial that took over five months.
A panel of nine jurors unanimously acquitted Lukas Ho, Lee Ka-pan, Ng Tsz-lok, Yeung Yi-sze, Cheung Ka-chun, Cheung Cheuk-ki, and Rebecca Ho at the High Court on Wednesday, The Witness reported.
The seven defendants were accused of conspiring to commit bombing of prescribed objects in three bomb plots between November 2019 and March 2020.
An eighth defendant, Chow Ho-man, was found not guilty of attempting to make an explosive in March 2020.
The three bomb plots involved planting explosives at a site near the Lo Wu border crossing point; Caritas Medical Centre, a public hospital in Sham Shui Po; and a car park in Tseung Kwan O, where a memorial was planned for a student who fell to his death amid a police-protesters clash in November 2019.
If convicted, the defendants would have faced up to life imprisonment.
The seven defendants also faced an alternative, lesser charge of conspiring to cause an explosion of a nature likely to endanger life or cause serious injury to property under the Crimes Ordinance. The offence carries a maximum penalty of 20 years behind bars.
Three of them – Lukas Ho, Lee, and Cheung Ka-chun – were convicted of the lesser charge.
Lee was acquitted of doing an act intending to pervert the course of justice over allegedly providing a false address to police. The prosecution said he had done so to obstruct a search at a Sai Ying Pun unit where explosives were stored.
Five of the defendants were remanded in custody while the other three – Yeung, Cheung Cheuk-ki, and Chow – were released on bail. The judge revoked their bail status on Monday as the jury began its deliberations.
‘Unimaginable’ consequences
The trial of the eight defendants began in November. The prosecution said Lukas Ho, Lee, Ng, Cheung Ka-chun, and Yeung were the “masterminds” of the conspiracy, while Cheung Cheuk-ki and Ho Pui-yan were only involved with the conspiracy.
Chow, the prosecution alleged, were not part of the conspiracy.
Lukas Ho was accused of renting a unit in Khora, a commercial building in Tai Kok Tsui, to make and test explosives.
Ng was said to have written statements sent by a Telegram group called “92sign” claiming responsibility for the first two bomb plots, at Caritas and near the Lo Wu checkpoint. According to the statements, both plots were linked to calls for the government to shut the border with mainland China amid the spread of Covid-19 in 2020.
The third plot – planned for March 8, 2020, at a car park near Sheung Tak Estate in Tseung Kwan O – did not happen. That day, supporters of the 2019 protests and unrest had planned to hold a memorial for Alex Chow, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology student who died after falling from the third storey of the car park four months prior.
Prosecutors said the seven defendants they accused of conspiring together had planned to place a 20 kg explosive shaped like a gravestone.
But the seven defendants – and the eighth – were arrested the night before.
Cheung Pak-kit, a superintendent at the police force’s national security department, said after the verdicts were delivered on Wednesday that 92sign was a “radical group” that began with making simple combustors, which then developed into homemade bombs with the potential to do grave damage.
“The technology and scale [of their explosives] evolved rapidly in a short time,” Cheung said in Cantonese. “If police had not taken action during the critical moment, the consequences would be unimaginable.”
It was the second trial under the United Nations (Anti-Terrorism Measures) Ordinance, enacted in 2002 in line with a binding UN Security Council resolution to implement counter-terrorism measures following the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US.
The first trial last year involved 14 defendants, seven of whom pleaded not guilty.
The seven were all cleared of their original offence under the anti-terrorism ordinance, although one was found guilty on an alternative charge. The other seven who pleaded guilty received jail sentences ranging from nearly six years to almost 24 years.
