China has sentenced John Shing-Wan Leung to life imprisonment on charges of espionage.
Beijing, China:
China has sentenced a 78-year-old US citizen to life imprisonment on charges of espionage, the court said in a statement on Monday.
John Shing-wan Leung, a US passport holder and permanent resident of Hong Kong, was “found guilty of espionage, sentenced to life imprisonment, deprived of political rights for life”, in a statement from the Intermediate People’s Court in the eastern city of Suzhou where did it go .
Suzhou authorities took “measures as mandated by law” against 78-year-old Leung in April 2021, without specifying when he was detained.
The US Embassy in Beijing did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment.
The court statement gave no further details on the allegations, and closed-door trials for sensitive cases are routine in China.
Such heavy punishment for foreign nationals is relatively rare in China.
The jailing is likely to further worsen relations with Washington, which are already severely strained.
– Amended anti-espionage law –
In April, China approved amendments to its anti-espionage law, expanding its scope by widening the definition of espionage and banning the transfer of any data defined by authorities as national security.
A media rights group said that same month authorities formally charged a prominent Chinese journalist with espionage, more than a year after he was detained while having lunch with a Japanese diplomat.
Dong Youyou, a senior columnist for the Communist Party newspaper Guangming Daily, was detained with the diplomat at a Beijing restaurant in February 2022, according to a statement released by his family and seen by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) .
The Japanese Foreign Ministry said last year that the diplomat had been released after a few hours of questioning.
In February, a Japanese man was sentenced to 12 years in prison for spying in China, according to Kyodo News.
Several high-profile cases of foreign detentions have damaged relations between China and the West over the years.
In 2019, Chinese-born Australian author Yang Jun was arrested on charges of espionage.
Australia last week called on another of its citizens – jailed journalist Cheng Lei – to be reunited with his family after 1,000 days in detention.
He was accused of “supplying state secrets abroad”.
Days after the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou in Canada in 2018, China detained two Canadians – former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael Spavor.
Beijing was accused of using the two men in a bout of “hostage diplomacy” to pressure Ottawa to release Meng.
The Canadian pair were freed hours later after a deal was struck to release Meng.
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