WASHINGTON: The US Justice Department on Thursday accused a prosecutor who was employed by the Chinese government to travel to the United States to direct the harassment campaign aimed at intimidating the Chinese population to return home to face criminal charges.
Tu Lan, 50, who served as a prosecutor with the People’s Attorney Hanyang, was the latest defendant in a broad investigation which had caused allegations of nine people accused of participating in secret operations to carry out supervision, harassing, stalks and forcing the Chinese people who lived in The United States returned to China through a repatriation effort known as “Operation Fox Hunt.” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Friday the United States slandered the country’s efforts to pursue criminal suspicion abroad.
Tu Lan and other defendants, Zhai Yongqiang, 46, are the latest to be charged in the characters returned by the Grand Federal Jury in New York.
LAN was also accused of ordering other co-conspirators to destroy evidence and block investigations.
The name of the ninth defendant remained under the seal.
The accusation in this case was announced in October, reading like a spy novel.
They involved allegations against the American private investigators and former New York City Police Sergans, Michael McMahon, alleged by prosecutors rented to oversee one of the target operations, called in the indictment only as “John Doe # 1.” Three of the defendants arrested, including McMahon, had begged innocent.
Lawrence Lustberg, lawyer McMahon, told Reuters that his client was truly “cheated and deceived” and “never knew it, in his actions as a private investigator hired, he acted in any way in the name of the Chinese government.” The charges accused “Co-Conspirator plans certain rendition operations to follow and repatriate John Doe # 1 through psychological coercion.” This includes plans in April 2017 to bring the victim’s elderly father to the United States from China to deliver a message that if he failed to return, his family would suffer “serious danger.” The charges said Tu Lan flew from China to New Jersey to help oversee the operation, where he then met with other co-conspirators and directed them to spy on one of John Doe # 1.
He then returned to China, where the prosecutor said He continued to oversee the effort.
The plot finally failed, and he and other people ordered that dad was returned to China, while he was also thought to order the co-conspirator to “remove all chat content” about their plans.