spying for China<\/a> \u200cin the UK.<\/p>\nWai was also convicted of misusing his Border Force job to search the interior ministry\u2019s computer database for details about targets.<\/p>\n
The men, both dual Chinese and British nationals, had denied the accusations, while the Chinese embassy in London said the case was \u201cnothing but a political move of abusing the \u2060law\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe United Kingdom now faces persistent, adaptive, \u2060and often clandestine interference by foreign state actors and those acting on their behalf,\u201d the judge, Bobbie Cheema-Grubb, told London\u2019s Old Bailey court.<\/p>\n
\u201cModern foreign intelligence activity is not \u2060confined to orthodox espionage against military or governmental secrets. It may take the form of surveillance, information \u2060gathering, intimidation, and targeting of dissidents and \u2060those who have sought the protection of this country\u2019s laws.\u201d<\/p>\n
She jailed Yuen for eight years, while Wai was sentenced to 10 years in prison.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe activity of Wai \u200cand Yuen was truly chilling,\u201d said Commander Helen Flanagan, head of \u201ccounter-terrorism\u201d policing in London.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were spying and targeting individuals in \u200cthe \u200cUK who were pro-democracy campaigners and were simply protesting against the Hong Kong and Chinese government and authorities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wai and Yuen were arrested after a failed bid to snatch a former Hong Kong resident, Monica Kwong, from her flat in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, on May 1, 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The men, dual Chinese-British nationals, are believed to be the first people convicted of spying for China \u200cin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645467,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1296,891,924,3764,591,59,57,58,6875,50,229,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-645466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-asia-pacific","tag-china","tag-crime","tag-espionage","tag-europe","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-hong-kong","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}