Australia expresses concern about China's Rio Tinto trial

Australian national Stern Hu is one of four employees of mining giant Rio Tinto who are due to face a court in Shanghai on Monday charged with stealing commercial secrets and taking bribes.

Hu and the others were arrested nine months ago. At the time, Rio Tinto was acting as lead negotiator for global iron ore suppliers in price talks with Chinese steel mills and Hu was Rio Tinto's senior executive in China in charge of iron ore. Few details of the allegations against the suspects have been made public.

Defense lawyer Tao Wuping said the hearing scheduled for Monday in Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People's Court will probably not be open to media or the public since the charges involve business secrets.

“We are obviously very disappointed that that court will not be conducted in an open fashion and representations are being made to the Chinese government about that matter,” Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard told reporters.

The case has strained relations between Australia and China, and a government spokesman in Beijing said it should not be politicized.

Some Australian legislators on Thursday alleged China's court system was controlled by the country's communist rulers and that the verdict may already have been decided.

“The sentence for Stern Hu will have been predetermined in Beijing,” Sen. Bob Brown, leader of the minority Greens party, told reporters. “Australia needs to be, in the strongest terms ... telling China that it must open that trial.”

Michael Danby, a government legislator who heads Parliament's foreign affairs subcommittee, warned that “prosecuting foreign businesspeople in this way damages China's political and economic relations with other countries.”

Hu's “prosecution is essentially political in nature and if the Chinese Communist authorities decided that it was in their interests to drop the charges against him, they could and would do so,” Danby said.

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