Tiananmen Square protester turned lawyer killed in his New York office
- Arrest made after stabbing of Li Jinjin, who had settled in the US and worked as an immigration lawyer
- Li had been jailed in China after joining the 1989 protests and continued to advocate for those punished by the Chinese authorities
Li Jinjin, 66, was stabbed to death in the city where he had long worked as an immigration lawyer, even as he continued to advocate publicly for the many people jailed or killed by Chinese authorities during the nation’s democracy movement.
An arrest was made over his killing. Police said Xiaoning Zhang, 25, was taken into custody and faced a murder charge. It was not immediately clear when she would be arraigned or whether she had retained an attorney.
Chuang Chuang Chen, CEO of the China Democracy Party, and lawyer Wei Zhu, a friend of Li’s, both told the New York Daily News that the killing might have stemmed from Li’s refusal to take Zhang on as a client.
Zhang went to the US in August on an F-1 student visa to study in Los Angeles, Chen told the Daily News.
