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The judgment states that in the early hours of 1 October 2019, the police breached the door of Flat B on the 9th floor of On Wo Building on Hennessy Road in Wan Chai, arresting five defendants inside, and that a sixth defendant was arrested in mid-October and charged with conspiracy to participate in a riot or unlawful assembly. The prosecution alleges that the defendants stored petrol bomb materials, communications devices, and protective equipment in the flat, and were suspected of planning to take part in demonstrations and throw petrol bombs between 28 September and 1 October; the defendants each remained silent, and the parties disputed the origin and probative value of personal items, lift CCTV footage, and social media messages, with the case being tried solely on the prosecution’s circumstantial evidence.
It must be proven beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant had reached an unlawful agreement at the time of arrest, satisfying the conspiracy offence’s requirements as to agreement, intention, and implementation.
In reviewing the petrol bomb materials, no completed devices were found, and the personal items and communication records constituted only indirect inference; the evidence was insufficient to rule out lawful protest or other uses, and there were doubts about the investigating officers providing expert evidence as factual witnesses, making it difficult to meet the standard for conviction.
The judge considered that the prosecution’s evidence relied heavily on hindsight bias and circumstantial inference, and noted that it had not been reliably established that there was a joint criminal plan among the defendants.
Ultimately, the court found that the prosecution had not established the charges of conspiracy to participate in a riot or conspiracy to participate in an unlawful assembly, and acquitted all defendants. (Translated from Chinese to English by AI)
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