The street out the front of the Shanghai No 1 Intermediate People’s Court in China was a place to which fellow correspondents and I had become quite accustomed.

So, when we found out that we were going to actually be allowed in to watch the verdict in the Rio Tinto trial, I’ll admit that there was a fair bit of excitement.

After eight months of reporting on the arrest and then trial of Australian Stern Hu – a trial that has seen Canberra and Beijing again trading blows over justice and sovereignty – we were finally going to get to see him.

Stern Hu and his three Chinese colleagues Liu Caikui, Ge Minqiang and Wang Yong were facing charges relating to receiving bribes and also offering inducements in exchange for the secrets of Chinese steel companies.

For our purposes, the entire hearing had been held behind closed doors. During the bribery part, Australian diplomatic observers had been allowed in (though they too would be denied access to the commercial secrets part).

So, in the early part of the trial, we were relying on Australia’s Consul General in Shanghai Tom Connor for any solid information at all about what was going on inside the court room.

When he emerged from the first day of the hearing dozens of reporters jostled and shoved to hear and record what he had to say.

He was being very careful about what he said but the gathered reporters, Chinese and international, were hanging off his every word.

And that’s how we proceeded throughout the case.

The only other sources of information were the defence lawyers. They would only confirm dribs and drabs of information and refused all requests for taped interviews.

So fast forward to the verdict and we were actually being allowed inside to do some first-hand reporting.

We exchanged our journalist cards for yellow passes, went through a security check and walked up the stairs and into the court complex.

We walked through a large polished, cream foyer with mosaics either side depicting historic court-type images from ancient Greece, Mesopotamia and China – this presumably gives the institution a link to human systems of justice developing over the centuries.

Mind you I’m not sure what the ancient Greeks would make of China’s court system with it complete lack of judicial independence and politicised outcomes.

We were ushered into the lift and emerged on a floor with police everywhere (it turned out they were there just to keep an eye on the 30 or so reporters allowed in).

When we walked into the court room, I noticed that there was nobody in there except journalists, police and some minor court officials.

In front of us were two large television screens with live connections to another court downstairs.

Oh, so we weren’t going to be actually allowed into the court room.

From there we watched four defendants brought in – they all looked like men without hope.

When they were expected to sit down the guards pushed down on their shoulders, when the time came to stand up and learn of their fate, the guards lifted them up from under their armpits.

They’d become life size bunraku puppets who couldn’t move without their handlers.

But which one of them was Stern Hu? I really couldn’t tell.

Fellow correspondent from The Australian Michael Sainsbury was sitting next to me – he couldn’t tell either: Nor could ABC producer Jiang Xin who was sitting on the other side of me.

The media uses two photos of Stern Hu supplied by Rio Tinto. Whichever one of the four he was he does not look like either of these photos now.

Apparently he was one with a full head of grey hair.

Then came the verdict – and it was massive.

The strategy of admitting to partial guilt and hoping for the mercy of the court had not prevented punishments which involved long periods of incarceration – between seven and 14 years.

Stern Hu and his three colleagues were found guilty of both accepting bribes and also receiving secret information relating to Chinese steel companies.

According to the judge, this information had been passed on to Rio Tinto headquarters and enabled the mining company to rip off Chinese steel companies to the tune of over a billion yuan when it came to negotiating on price.

Outside the court, again it was Consul General Tom Connor who announced the result to a huge scrum of reporters.

These significant sentences have left plenty of questions unanswered.

Because the trial was held in secret, most of the detail about what these men are said to have done is still not known.

Citing their “deplorable behaviour” Rio Tinto has now dismissed its four staff. The company’s official statement was all about them receiving bribes and did not mention the secret information said to have been passed on to senior people at Rio Tinto.

But as details of the secret part of the trial start emerging, questions are being asked about how much Rio Tinto has been involved in this matter as a company and if it plausibly says that it didn’t know what its staff were doing in its name in China.

Assuming that a successful appeal is virtually impossible, Australian Stern Hu will be spending the next nine years in Qingpu Prison on the outskirts of Shanghai.

He’ll be eligible to start applying for parole in around five years.