A Chinese court jails 78-year-old US citizen for life alleging espionage
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Beijing: China has done it again. This time not just detaining a foreign citizen on charges of espionage but handing out a life in prison to a US citizen, according to a report.
An Intermediate People's Court in the eastern city of Suzhou on Monday has sentenced a 78-year-old US citizen, who is a Hong Kong permanent resident, to life imprisonment, news agency AFP reported.
The court in a statement said that John Shing-wan Leung was found ‘guilty of espionage, sentenced to life imprisonment, deprived of political rights for life’.
More than saying that they had taken ‘compulsory measures according to the law’, the authorities are silent about when Leung was taken into custody.
The jailing of the US citizen could further worsen China’s already strained relations with the US, according to the report.
The action comes after China broadened its anti-espionage law in April with an amendment to widen the definition of ‘spying and banning the transfer of any data’ related to national security.
The life sentence, meted out to the US citizen, runs contrary to the belief that heavy punishment for foreigner are ‘relatively rare’ in China.
The life sentences to the US citizen is reminiscent of previous sentences involving foreign citizens.
Authorities last year detained a noted Chinese journalist for spying after having lunch with a Japanese diplomat.
The Japanese foreign minister later said that the diplomat was released after a few hours of questioning.
However, Dong Yuyu, who was a senior columnist at the Communist Party newspaper Guangming Daily, was detained, his family later said.
In another similar incident, a Japanese man was handed out 12 years in prison for espionage.
Chinese-born Australian writer Yang Jun was arrested in 2019 on charges of spying.
