Mainland lawyers have been asked by authorities to pull out of a high-profile appeal case involving two workers for a website that was earlier accused of leaking the personal details of President Xi Jinping’s daughter.

Lawyers Huang Hanzhong and Huang Sha were summoned by justice officials in Guangdong for a meeting earlier this month and were asked to stay out of the upcoming appeals of Niu Tengyu and Chen Luoan.

Niu and Chen were among 24 workers at website EsuWiki who were held responsible for leaking the personal details and photo of Xi’s daughter, Xi Mingze, in 2019.

Niu was sentenced to 14 years in jail by a southern Guangdong court last December for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” “violating others’ privacy” and other charges. Niu’s mother said officials fabricated evidence to convict her son and tortured him.

Chen was sentenced to two and a half years in jail.

EsuWiki founder Xiao Yanrui told Apple Daily that the website’s administrator at the time, Gu Yangyang, helped authorities fabricate evidence against his colleagues, making them scapegoats.

In exchange for release following a brief arrest by the police, Gu turned on his colleagues while they were punished, Xiao said. Gu also had a powerful family background, with his father being a senior education official in Shanghai and his mother a senior executive at Alibaba’s Ant Group and a legislator in Shanghai’s Pudong district, Xiao added.

Xiao said Xi Mingze’s personal details, including her photo, were leaked on Twitter as early as the beginning of 2019 by an internet user named “Spider.” The details appeared to have been obtained from the mainland’s national education bureau, Xiao said.

Xi Jinping’s particulars were exposed about one year earlier after a police officer was paid 6,000 yuan (US$925) to obtain the details from the public security authorities’ computer system, Xiao said.

Kevin Liu, Chen’s domestic partner, also accused Gu of making up evidence against his EsuWiki colleagues. Among the fake evidence was a conversation record between Chen and Niu, Liu told Apple Daily.

Chen was charged with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” as well as theft.

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