“We continue to follow Ms. Phan-Gillis’s case closely,” the consulate’s press office said by email. Mr. Gillis said then that the claims in the indictment crumbled under closer scrutiny. The prosecutors claimed that Ms. Phan-Gillis had spied in China for a time in 1996 when she was not even in the country, he said. At the trial, Ms. Phan-Gillis pleaded guilty to the spying charge, he said. “They put words in my mouth,” Ms. Phan-Gillis told a visiting American consular officer, according to an earlier account given by Mr. Gillis.

Source: New York Times April 25, 2017 14:13 UTC