28 January 2015 Last updated at 05:47 ET
BBC News, Beijing
Pu Zhiqiang (C), the lawyer for Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, talks to the media at the artist’s studio in Beijing on November 14, 2011.
Pu Zhiqiang was famous for his eloquence in the courtroom
Before his detention last May, Chinese human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang often posted his thoughts online.
Between 2012 and 2014, Mr Pu wrote thousands of dispatches on weibo, China’s version of Twitter.
Now just 28 of those messages could be used by the government to put Pu Zhiqiang behind bars for a very long time.
Mr Pu was once a towering presence in Chinese courtrooms, garnering admiration for his spirited defence of famous dissidents, including the artist Ai Weiwei, and the downtrodden, including poor farmers fighting rural corruption.
He was famous for his eloquence, sometimes citing classical Chinese poetry in the courtroom.
‘Telling lies’
But Pu Zhiqiang’s blunt weibo messages, many of them expressing frustration with the ruling Chinese Communist Party, are forming the state’s case against him.
Police supplied a short list to Pu Zhiqiang’s lawyer, Mo Shaoping.
“From top to bottom, the Communist Party can’t get through a single day without telling lies,” he posted on 24 July, 2012.
