Activists fear "reckoning" after Chen departs As Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese legal activist who escaped from seven years of persecution, prepares for a new life after his arrival in the US, friends and relatives he left behind are bracing for a new round of abuse. "I would have preferred Chen Guangcheng to stay a little longer," said Liu Weiguo, a lawyer in Jinan, the capital of Shandong province where Mr Chen comes from. Now that he has left, retribution against those close to him will no longer attract any attention. There will be a big reckoning eventually. Mr Chen, his wife Yuan Weijing and their two children arrived at Newark-Liberty International Airport on Saturday night, ending a month-long odyssey from house arrest in his heavily-guarded home village to the US embassy in Beijing and from there to a Beijing hospital which tested relations between the world's two leading powers. Under a deal hammered out by US and Chinese diplomats, Mr Chen will take up a fellowship at New York University Law School. On his arrival, he thanked his friends for helping him escape and the US government for protecting him, and added he was grateful for the Chinese government's restraint and calm in dealing with his case. Rights activists are most worried about Chen Kegui, Mr Chen's nephew, who was detained on charges of intentional homicide after his uncle's escape from Dongshigu, the village where he had been imprisoned in his own home for more than a year. According to family members present that night, Chen Kegui injured a local official with a kitchen knife as he was defending himself and his mother against an attack from a dozen men. The unidentified men had broken into their home wielding wooden clubs shortly after midnight on April 27 after Chen Guangcheng's escape had been discovered. Nobody died in the incident and lawyers who have looked at the case said the charges were trumped up. The government forced 13 lawyers from all over the country who offered to take up his defence to drop the case with travel bans, surveillance or threats of withholding their license renewal. Ding Qikui and Si Weijiang, two Shanghai-based lawyers whom Chen's family then entrusted with the case, were barred from taking the mandate by the county government last week. Local officials told the two lawyers that Mr Chen had chosen a public defender. "That reminds me of how they persecuted me in 2006," Chen Guangcheng told the FT in an interview shortly before his departure from Beijing. Back then, the local government also refused to allow any external lawyers to represent him - a practice at odds with Chinese law - in a case that accused the blind activist of "causing a disturbance" and "destroying property" and ended with a four year jail term. "That this naked, shameless abuse can still happen again six years later ...," he said. He added that he believed his nephew was tortured to accept the public defender. In a video message obtained by the FT, a tearful Liu Fang, Chen Kegui's wife, begged for help for her husband. She is still on the run, and local officials have tried to force lawyers to turn her in to "prove" that the family had chosen them to represent Chen Kegui. Chen Guangfu, Chen Kegui's father, said in a video posted online that security officials had whipped his hands and stomped on his feet while interrogating him for two days and two nights in late April. Government retribution against other people who helped Chen Guangcheng or are close to him has so far been relatively mild by Chinese standards. He Peirong, a teacher and blogger who picked him up and drove him to Beijing after his escape, was detained for a week but released on May 4, and said she had been treated politely and was relatively optimistic. Jiang Tianyong, a prominent rights lawyer, was detained and beaten by state security officials when he tried to visit Chen Guangcheng in the hospital. The beating caused a bloodclot in one ear which temporarily impaired his hearing, but he has returned home and is no longer being mistreated. Teng Biao, another well-known rights lawyer, was forced to leave Beijing last week and told he would only be allowed to return after Mr Chen's departure. He was barred from speaking to the press. Guo Yushan, a Beijing-based scholar who also played a role in Mr Chen's escape, is also being kept under surveillance but was not mistreated. Hu Jia, a prominent rights activist, and Zeng Jinyan, his wife, are both under surveillance. Additional reporting by Arash Massoudi in New York and Zhao Tianqi in Beijing