Hong Kong  - A former Tiananmen Square dissident who was handed over to mainland Chinese police by Hong Kong a year ago, has gone on trial Sichuan province, Hong Kong radio news said Thursday.

Zhou Yongjun, 42, a student leader in the 1989 pro-democracy movement who now lives in United States, is believed to be facing charges of defrauding a Hong Kong bank.

The accusation centres around Zhou's use of a bogus identity card in September 2008 when he came to Hong Kong with the aim of visiting his elderly parents in China.

He is believed to have used a Malaysian national's passport. He has no Chinese visa since fleeing to the United States, said the report on Hong Kong government radio station RTHK.

The start of his trial comes one day after US President Barack Obama ended a visit to China during which he had talked in public on the issue of human rights.

Zhou, one of the most prominent of the 1989 student demonstrators, was pictured kneeling on the steps of the Great Hall of the People during the Tiananmen Square protests pleading for political reforms.

Afterwards, he fled to the United States where he is now in the process of applying for citizenship.

His arrest came in September 2008 when immigration officers allegedly found him in possession of fraudulent identity documents as he entered Hong Kong from neighbouring Macau.

His supporters claim immigration officers put him into a van and drove him across the border to mainland China against his will, even though there is no agreement for cross-border extraditions between Hong Kong and China.

Girlfriend Zhang Yuewei claims Zhou's family only learned of his arrest and detention in Sichuan seven months after he was placed in custody in mainland China.

Hong Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" agreement, after 150 years of British colonial rule.

The city has a separate legal and political system and a mini- constitution that guarantees freedom of speech and political freedoms.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of students were killed by Chinese troops in June 1989 when the pro-democracy movement was brutally crushed in the streets around Tiananmen Square.(dpa)