A Chinese military researcher hiding out in China’s San Francisco consulate has been arrested and is being held in a Sacramento jail after being charged with visa fraud.
It was first reported that Tang Juan was being harbored by China and was wanted by U.S. authorities on Wednesday, the same day that the United States ordered the Chinese government to shut down its consulate in Houston. China retaliated on Friday by ordering the U.S. to shut down its consulate in Chengdu.
A Justice Department official told the Washington Examiner on Friday that Tang Juan, 37, was arrested, and the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department inmate search shows that Tang was booked at the Sacramento County Main Jail just after midnight early Friday morning. U.S. law enforcement would not have had the authority to enter the Chinese consulate forcibly to arrest Tang, and it is not immediately clear how she ended up in U.S. custody. She is expected to make an appearance by video at a Sacramento federal courtroom Friday afternoon.
Tang was one of four Chinese military members who have been charged by the Justice Department in recent weeks for concealing their ties to China's military and thus committing visa fraud while acting as students or researchers at U.S. universities.
“These members of China’s People Liberation Army applied for research visas while hiding their true affiliation with the PLA,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said this week. “This is another part of the Chinese Communist Party’s plan to take advantage of our open society and exploit academic institutions.”
John Brown, the executive assistant director of the FBI's National Security Branch, said that “in interviews with members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in over 25 cities across the U.S., the FBI uncovered a concerted effort to hide their true affiliation to take advantage of the United States and the American people.”
Tang was interviewed by the FBI on June 20 about her concealing her ties to the PLA while she was a researcher at the University of California, Davis, and the FBI executed a search of her home and her electronics media showing further evidence she had hidden her ties to the PLA when applying for a visa. Court documents show that the bureau “assesses that, at some point following the search and interview … Tang went to the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco.”
The FBI’s assessment that China had been harboring a fugitive from U.S. authorities was revealed in a seven-page detention memo related to another Chinese national, Chen Song, an active-duty PLA military scientist who was arrested for allegedly committing visa fraud as a researcher at Stanford University. The FBI memo argued that “as the Tang case demonstrates, the Chinese consulate in San Francisco provides a potential safe harbor for a PLA official intent on avoiding prosecution in the United States.”
The bureau said Tang's J-1 visa application claimed she had never served in the Chinese military, but an “open source investigation” revealed pictures of her in the uniform of the Civilian Cadre of the PLA and that she had been employed as a researcher at China’s Air Force Military Medical University. When the bureau interviewed her on June 20, Tang “denied serving in the Chinese military.” She soon fled to the nearby Chinese consulate.
“Put simply, the PRC government is intent on protecting its officials from prosecution in the United States,” DOJ’s court filing stated.
A Justice Department official told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday that the U.S. had made the Chinese government aware that Tang has been charged with a crime and that she was a fugitive from the law.
The DOJ’s detention memo also discussed Xin Wang, a Chinese national arrested at Los Angeles International Airport in June while trying to flee to China, who was a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, and who revealed he had lied on his visa application and was actually an active duty member in the PLA.
The memo additionally described the case of L.T., a Chinese national who was in the U.S. on a J-1 visa and was interviewed by Customs and Border Patrol at LAX, revealing that she was a researcher at Duke University while being funded by the China Scholarship Council. She was affiliated with the PLA General Hospital and PLA Medical Academy.
Kaikai Zhao, a graduate student studying machine learning and artificial intelligence at Indiana University, was arrested last week after lying on a visa in June 2018, claiming never to have served in the Chinese military when, in fact, Zhao served in the National University of Defense Technology and had attended the Chinese Air Force Aviation University.
World - Latest - Google News
July 25, 2020 at 12:46AM
https://ift.tt/2WUgOgg
Chinese military researcher hiding out in China’s San Francisco consulate is arrested - Washington Examiner
World - Latest - Google News
https://ift.tt/2SeTG7d
https://ift.tt/35oCZy1
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Chinese military researcher hiding out in China’s San Francisco consulate is arrested - Washington Examiner"
Post a Comment