A Brooklyn jury today convicted Chinese academic Wang Shujun of acting as a foreign agent of China, reports Radio Free Asia.
The conviction brings to an end a week-long federal trial. He is accused of infiltrating the pro-Democracy activists in the U.S. and sending information to the Chinese Ministry of State Security, according to the indictment filed in 2022.
“Today’s indictment exposes and disrupts an operation by the PRC (People’s Republic of China) that threatens the safety and freedom of Chinese nationals residing in the United States on account of their pro-democracy beliefs and speech,” U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace said to Reuters in 2022.
While many such cases have been sighted by Asian American activists as overreaching and examples of racial profiling, little has been said by those same activists about this case.
Wang remains free on bail and continues to profess his innocence.
“This verdict feels unjust to me,” Wang told RFA.
He joked he would write a novel from prison about his experience, but later said he had not decided whether to appeal.
“The indictment could have been the plot of a spy novel, but the evidence is shockingly real that the defendant was a secret agent for the Chinese government,” Peace said in a statement after the verdict was announced.
Chinese government officials condemned the prosecution as misguided, adding that many such cases have proven to be unfounded with even past convictions eventually overturned.
Prosecutors presented evidence using emails, messages, calendars and notebooks they said connected Wang to the MSS.
Eventually, Wang acknowledged that he had been in contact with Chinese security officials regularly.
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