Current:Home > StocksRekubit-Man known as pro-democracy activist convicted in US of giving China intel on dissidents -Balance Wealth Academy
Rekubit-Man known as pro-democracy activist convicted in US of giving China intel on dissidents
SignalHub View
Date:2025-04-11 05:40:38
NEW YORK (AP) — A Chinese American scholar was convicted Tuesday of U.S. charges of using his reputation as a pro-democracy activist to gather information on Rekubitdissidents and feed it to his homeland’s government.
A federal jury in New York delivered the verdict in the case of Shujun Wang, who helped found a pro-democracy group in the city.
Prosecutors said that at the behest of China’s main intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security, Wang lived a double life for over a decade.
“The defendant pretended to be opposed to the Chinese government so that he could get close to people who were actually opposed to the Chinese government,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Ellen Sise said in an opening statement last month. “And then, the defendant betrayed those people, people who trusted him, by reporting information on them to China.”
Wang was convicted of charges including conspiring to act as a foreign agent without notifying the attorney general. He had pleaded not guilty.
A message seeking comment was sent to Wang’s attorneys.
Wang came to New York in 1994 to teach after doing so at a Chinese university. He later became a U.S. citizen.
He helped found the Queens-based Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang Memorial Foundation, named for two leaders of the Chinese Communist Party in the 1980s.
According to prosecutors, Wang composed emails — styled as “diaries” — that recounted conversations, meetings and plans of various critics of the Chinese government.
One message was about events commemorating the 1989 protests and bloody crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, prosecutors said. Other emails talked about people planning demonstrations during various visits that Chinese President Xi Jinping made to the U.S.
Instead of sending the emails and creating a digital trail, Wang saved them as drafts that Chinese intelligence officers could read by logging in with a shared password, prosecutors said.
In other, encrypted messages, Wang relayed details of upcoming pro-democracy events and plans to meet with a prominent Hong Kong dissident while the latter was in the U.S., according to an indictment.
During a series of FBI interviews between 2017 and 2021, Wang initially said he had no contacts with the Ministry of State Security, but he later acknowledged on videotape that the intelligence agency asked him to gather information on democracy advocates and that he sometimes did, FBI agents testified.
But, they said, he claimed he didn’t provide anything really valuable, just information already in the public domain.
Wang’s lawyers portrayed him as a gregarious academic with nothing to hide.
“In general, fair to say he was very open and talkative with you, right?” defense attorney Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma asked an undercover agent who approached Wang in 2021 under the guise of being affiliated with the Chinese security ministry.
“He was,” said the agent, who testified under a pseudonym. He recorded his conversation with Wang at the latter’s house in Connecticut.
“Did he seem a little lonely?” Margulis-Ohnuma asked a bit later. The agent said he didn’t recall.
Wang told agents his “diaries” were advertisements for the foundation’s meetings or write-ups that he was publishing in newspapers, according to testimony. He also suggested to the undercover agent that publishing them would be a way to deflect any suspicion from U.S. authorities.
Another agent, Garrett Igo, told jurors that when Wang found out in 2019 that investigators would search his phone for any contacts in the Chinese government, he paused for a minute.
“And then he said, ‘Do anything. I don’t care,’” Igo recalled.
veryGood! (22836)
Related
- Questlove charts 50 years of SNL musical hits (and misses)
- Tennessee House kills bill that would have banned local officials from studying, funding reparations
- Russia extends Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich's pretrial detention yet again
- Russia extends Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich's pretrial detention yet again
- The 401(k) millionaires club keeps growing. We'll tell you how to join.
- Biden pardons 11 people and shortens the sentences of 5 others convicted of non-violent drug crimes
- The 15 Best After-Sun Products That'll Help Soothe and Hydrate Your Sunburnt Skin
- Review: Zendaya's 'Challengers' serves up saucy melodrama – and some good tennis, too
- 'No Good Deed': Who's the killer in the Netflix comedy? And will there be a Season 2?
- Jon Bon Jovi talks 'mental anguish' of vocal cord issues, 'big brother' Bruce Springsteen
Ranking
- B.A. Parker is learning the banjo
- Machine Gun Kelly Celebrates Birthday With Megan Fox by His Side
- Senators demand accounting of rapid closure plan for California prison where women were abused
- Los Angeles marches mark Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day
- A South Texas lawmaker’s 15
- Firefighters fully contain southern New Jersey forest fire that burned hundreds of acres
- The Essentials: Mindy Kaling spills on running to Beyoncé, her favorite Sharpie and success
- Tiffany Haddish opens up about sobriety, celibacy five months after arrest on suspicion of DUI
Recommendation
Rylee Arnold Shares a Long
Horoscopes Today, April 23, 2024
Arizona grand jury indicts 11 Republicans who falsely declared Trump won the state in 2020
Angel Reese, Kamilla Cardoso give Chicago, WNBA huge opportunity. Sky owners must step up.
NFL Week 15 picks straight up and against spread: Bills, Lions put No. 1 seed hopes on line
Charlie Woods attempting to qualify for 2024 US Open at Florida event
Medical plane crashes in North Carolina, injuring pilot and doctor on board
Angel Reese, Kamilla Cardoso give Chicago, WNBA huge opportunity. Sky owners must step up.