(Minghui.org) More than one year ago, Shenyang police launched a wave of arrests of local Falun Gong practitioners in preparation for the 12^th National Games, with the Chinese President in attendance. Mr. Yu Ming (于溟), a successful clothing factory owner, was among about a dozen residents taken into custody on August 29, 2013.

Mr. Yu Ming

The police launched a manhunt for Mr. Yu after he jumped out of a police car transporting him to a detention center. He was captured less than one month later on September 24, and has since remained captive at the Shenyang City First Detention Center.

One insider recently confirmed that Mr. Yu was brutally tortured during interrogation on November 8 and 9, 2013. The guards pricked his fingernails with a safety pin and hit him in the chest with bottles filled with water.

Though the police failed to extract confessions from Mr. Yu through torture, they managed to have the local court accept his case around June of this year.

Mr. Yu's two lawyers (one from Beijing and the other from Shenyang) tried eight times to meet with him at the detention center, but were turned away each time.

Arrested in September of 2013, Tortured in November

Mr. Yu was arrested on August 29, 2013 while attending his nephew's wedding. He managed to jump out of the police car and escaped the next day, only to be captured again on September 24.

According to the aforementioned eyewitness, Mr. Yu was interrogated and brutalized on November 8 and 9 that year at the Shenyang City First Detention Center.

The guards kept Mr. Yu handcuffed and shackled during those two days of interrogation. They moved him to a special interrogation room with no surveillance camera on the night of November 8. Four groups of three guards took turns interrogating him, but he refused to disclose anything.

At around 10 p.m., the guards began to beat Mr. Yu. They kicked his legs and feet, pulled his hair and ears, and also hit him in the chest repeatedly with bottles filled with water. In addition, they used a safety pin to prick his finger nails.

Torture Re-enactment: Pricking fingernails with a safety pin

The guards didn't stop their torture until Mr. Yu's heart started to fail in the wee hours of November 9. A doctor surnamed Zhang checked his vital signs. Mr. Yu's blood pressure had shot up to 190 and his heart rate to more than 150 beats per minute.

As day broke, however, a new group of guards came in to continue the same torture.

Torture Re-enactment: Beating

Unable to extract any useful information from Mr. Yu, the guards threatened to torture his fellow practitioners Li Dongxu and Gao Jinqun instead. For the sake of those two friends, he signed the interrogation record against his will. He also put down his name on several blank sheets of paper that the guards forced him to sign.

After realizing his mistake of complying with the guards, Mr. Yu soon declared his signatures null and void.

Family Forced to Remain Abroad

Mr. Yu was a successful clothing factory owner by his late 20's. Among his nearly 100 employees were dozens of local residents laid off from state-owned enterprises. He retrained them into skilled workers in his company.

After the persecution of Falun Gong started in 1999, he was arrested and detained at least five times, and taken to forced labor camps three times. During every detention, he suffered physical and mental abuse, and was on the verge of death multiple times.

Following his September arrest last year, his wife and daughter, who were vacationing in the U.S., made a difficult decision to stay in the States to avoid getting implicated. Their two-year-old son is being looked after by relatives.