Hong Kong, May 15 (ANI): A Chinese court docket has sentenced a 78-year-old American citizen to life in jail on spying expenses, CNN reported.
A everlasting resident of Hong Kong, John Shing-Wan Leung, was convicted of spying and given a life sentence on Monday by the Intermediate People’s Court within the japanese metropolis of Suzhou, as per an announcement on the court docket’s social media account.
The court docket’s assertion, which didn’t present particulars on his expenses, additional mentioned that Leung was detained on April 15, 2021, by state safety authorities in Suzhou, Jiangsu provinceThe court docket has additionally confiscated the person’s private property price 50,00,000 yuan, the assertion mentioned, in keeping with CNN.
No info on Leung’s detention or the court docket course of that led to his conviction was disclosed by Chinese authorities and state media. Cases which contain state safety are normally dealt with behind closed doorways in China.
Leung’s imprisonment came about whereas Sino-American relations are at their lowest level in fifty years because of escalating competitors in commerce, expertise, geopolitics, and navy supremacy.
It additionally occurred at a time when American and Chinese officers are resuming high-level interactions after efforts to enhance relations earlier this 12 months have been damaged by a dispute over a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon.
Leung is amongst an rising variety of foreigners who’ve fallen sufferer to China’s escalating anti-espionage marketing campaign beneath chief Xi Jinping, in keeping with CNN.
Earlier, a Japanese worker of Astellas Pharma was detained in Beijing on suspected espionage – the seventeenth Japanese nationwide to have been detained in China for the reason that counter-espionage legislation was launched in 2014.
Two Canadians, a former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor, have been detained in China for nearly three years in one other high-profile case.
Their arrest on expenses of spying in late 2018 got here briefly after Canada arrested Chinese businesswoman and Huawei govt Meng Wanzhou on a US warrant in relation to the corporate’s enterprise dealings in Iran, as per CNN.
The two males have been however launched on the identical day that Meng was granted permission by Canada to return to China, regardless of Beijing’s repeated denials that their circumstances have been motivated by political revenge.
China handed a wide-ranging modification to its already complete counter-espionage legislation final month, and it’ll go into drive on July 1.
The new laws expanded the definition of espionage from overlaying state secrets and techniques and intelligence to any “documents, data, materials or items related to national security and interest,” in addition to cyberattacks in opposition to authorities establishments or essential info infrastructure, CNN reported. (ANI)