Last updated December 19, 2010 9:05 p.m. PT
To hear his wife and attorney tell it, Woodinville resident Lian Yang has little love for the Chinese government.
They tell the federal court holding Yang that the 46-year-old fled his native country in 1988 out of fear the government would be coming after him for speaking out. His parents followed, afraid they'd be persecuted for their religious beliefs.
Which all seems a bit incongruous, given that federal prosecutors now claim Yang -- a software engineer, father of two and longtime Northwest resident -- was basically a spy for the Chinese government.
"Boiled down to its essence, the defendant's offense amounted to a form of espionage on behalf of the People's Republic of China to acquire the United States' sensitive military technology," Assistant U.S. Attorney Todd Greenberg told the court, expounding on allegations made earlier this month that Yang had planned to smuggle restricted microchip sets to a contact in China.
"There is also no doubt that Yang was aware of the nefarious purpose to which his contacts in China intended to put the parts he was attempting to acquire," Greenberg continued.
Yang was arrested Dec. 3 following a months-long investigation sparked by a tip to the FBI that he was looking to purchase satellite parts that are illegal to export without State Department permission.
Since his arrest, legal wrangling before the U.S. District Court at Seattle has cast a little more light on the allegations against Yang and the defense -- chiefly denial -- he's prepared to offer.
Prosecutors contend Yang had arranged a meeting with undercover FBI agents on Dec. 3 at which he planned to pay $20,000 for five "sensitive military" parts he planned to send to China.
Charging him with conspiring to violate federal arms control laws, prosecutors claim Yang was attempting to pay $620,000 to acquire 300 satellite components. Sales of such items requires State Department approval.
Yang allegedly told an informant the parts were meant for the China Space Technology Co.'s spacecraft program. On another occasion, federal investigators contend Yang said some of the parts would be used in the design of "China's new generation of passenger jet."
A Seattle FBI special agent assigned to counterintelligence noted that Yang later said he didn't know how the high-tech components would be used.
"I don't know where it goes exactly," Yang is alleged to have said. "Maybe ? I know something totally different. ? At the end, it's used in a commercial airline. That's what they say, anyway."
Writing the court, Yang's attorney described him as the son of a Chinese dissident who made a life for himself in the United States during his 22 years in the country. A former Microsoft employee and Portland State University alum, Yang became a citizen in 1999.
Defense attorney John Henry Browne also assailed the allegations offered by prosecutors and asserted his client may have been entrapped by an FBI informant.
"The evidence is underwhelming -- at best -- with potentially serious overtones of entrapment," Browne told the court.
Asking the court to release her husband from the Federal Detention Center at SeaTac, Yang's wife recalled meeting him when he visited Moscow in 1997.
He was a tourist. She was an Armenian expat working as a tour guide. They were married the following year.
She joined Yang in the United States in 1999 and, until Yang's arrest, had been raising two sons together in the Seattle area.
Like seven colleagues and friends who've written the court, Yang's wife described her husband as a man at odds with the Chinese government.
She told the court her husband was pursuing a master's degree in 1988 when, at his parents' advice, he moved to New York to avoid retribution for public statements he'd made against the government. He later completed his graduate work at Portland State University and went on to work at Microsoft in 1994.
Yang, she said, is a practitioner of Fulan Gong, a philosophic-religious movement deemed a "heretical organization" by the Chinese government. Adherents in China are widely reported to be subject to harassment and abuse.
"I appeal to the U.S. Court, appeal to the humanity of this nation, the humanity both Lian and I felt deeply over all the years of residing in the U.S. surrounded by immigrants and local Americans," the woman wrote in a Dec. 10 letter to the court.
"He would never intentionally violate the law of the land, which allowed him to settle down and live in freedom."
Prosecutors claim Yang did just that and more.
His actions, Greenberg told the court, "posed a serious threat to the United States' national security."
Greenberg contended that the components have no non-military purpose. The federal prosecutor stopped short of offering how Yang's activities posed such a threat, but gave additional details related to the Woodinville man's arrest.
Agents tailing Yang on the day of his arrest watched as he visited several banks in the Seattle area, withdrawing small sums amounting to $20,000, the FBI counterintelligence agent told the court. Authorities claim Yang was attempting to avoid filing a report with the Department of Treasury as required for transactions involving more than $10,000.
Writing in support of Yang's detention, the agent claimed Yang admitted to planning to smuggle the parts to a contact in China.
Yang, the agent continued, had planned to drive to Vancouver, B.C., then fly to Beijing the following morning. He'd hired a woman to ride with him, the agent said, so as to appear less suspicious as he crossed the U.S.-Canadian border.
Searching Yang's car, agents found $1,150 and $1,200-worth of Chinese currency, as well as a list of electronic parts and a rental car receipt, the agent told the court.
The evening of his arrest, FBI agents served a search warrant on Yang's Woodinville home and interviewed his wife. Writing the court, the agent said Yang's wife was unaware he was planning to travel to China and believed her husband was flying to Toronto.
Having heard Yang's requests for release, U.S. Magistrate Judge James P. Donohue ordered that he be held without bail.
Donohoe found that Yang is suspected of selling "highly sensitive technology with military applications to agents of a foreign government," and went on to describe the evidence against Yang as "very strong."
The federal judge noted that Yang's contact with the FBI informant was often recorded and, in his view, Yang confessed following his arrest.
Yang remains jailed at the Federal Detention Center in SeaTac. Federal prosecutors have until March to return an indictment.
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php
Five Filters featured site: So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?.
No comments:
Post a Comment