A court in Beijing on Wednesday upheld the guilty verdict in the case of the teenage son of two famous military singers. Li Tianyi was given a 10-year jail sentence after being found guilty of taking part in the gang rape of a woman in Beijing in February.

The Beijing Municipal No. 1 Intermediate People's Court dismissed the appeal lodged by Meng Ge, the teenager's mother, against the first verdict in October, the court announced via its official Sina Weibo. Both Meng and her husband Li Shuangjing are senior singers with the PLA.

Li, 17, and the other four defendants took a woman surnamed Yang to a Beijing hotel room by force on February 17, beat her after she refused to have sex with them, and then gang-raped her.

Li was identified as the initiator and major attacker in the joint offense by judicial authorities but did not plead guilty.

The four other defendants, including three minors, will serve between three and 12 years in prison with two receiving probation, said the court.

During the second trial the court did not accept the claims of "unclear facts, insufficient evidence and a too heavy sentence" by the defense lawyer, according to the court statement.

"We insisted that Li had hired a prostitute, not raped a woman," Li Shanglin, one of Li Tianyi's lawyers, told the Global Times.

At the trial Li withdrew an earlier claim that he fell asleep during the gang rape, saying that he was not in the room when the crime happened and went out to answer a phone call from his mother, the Beijing News reported.

Li Jihong, the presiding judge of the court, told the Xinhua News Agency on Wednesday that Li Tianyi's altered confession conflicts with his earlier claims. It also clashed with the confessions of other suspects, so the court did not accept it as fact.

"The chances of Li Tianyi's succeeding in the appeal is very slim unless they find new facts and evidence," Mao Lixin, a lawyer at the Shangquan Law Firm told the Global Times on Wednesday.