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| Down Under |
| Chinese kidnap claim in doubt |
| 2005-06-11 |
| SERIOUS doubts have been cast on one of the key claims renegade Chinese diplomat Chen Yonglin used to justify his attempted defection to Australia. Mr Chen accused Beijing of mounting a kidnapping operation on Australian soil to take hostage the student son of a fugitive Chinese politician to coerce his return home to face justice. But yesterday he backed away from the claims when confronted by new evidence. "I said that in fear, and I don't want to talk about it again," he told The Weekend Australian. The runaway diplomat had earlier told The Australian through a minder, Jin Chin, that the student, Lan Meng, was kidnapped by Chinese agents in Sydney, "taken by fishing boat to a Chinese cargo ship on the high seas", then held hostage in China to force his father to give himself up. The father, Lan Fu, returned to China from Australia in February 2000. In November that year he was sentenced to death for taking bribes in China's biggest ever corruption scandal, a $US6billion smuggling racket centred on the southern port of Xiamen where Mr Lan was a deputy mayor. But Lan Fu's lawyer, Zhu Yongping, emphatically denied the kidnap story this week, insisting his client had given himself up voluntarily. Mr Zhu told The Weekend Australian that Lan Meng was not in China at the time of his father's trial. The Weekend Australian has also established that a young man named Lan Meng, now 23, was living in the Melbourne bayside suburb of Sandringham from November 1999 until November 2000. This suggests that he was in Melbourne for at least three months before Mr Lan returned to China, casting further doubt on the story that he was kidnapped and taken to China in the lead-up to Mr Lan's return. It was reported in February 2000 that Lan Fu had turned himself over to the Chinese Embassy in Australia. An Australian Foreign Affairs spokesman was quoted on February 23 in The South China Morning Post saying that Mr Lan had arrived in Australia a month before and left about two weeks later, and "as far as we know, he left of his own free will". Back in China he was held at a detention centre in Quanzhou City, Fujian Province, before his trial in September 2000. His lawyer Zhu Yongping of the Datong Law Office of Guangdong said his client, sentenced to death with a two year reprieve, was now in Zhangzhou City Prison where his death sentence is yet to be formally commuted. Whether or not the alleged kidnapping occurred, it is believed Mr Lan's wife Lai Chongxin and Lan Meng are still in Australia. Ms Lai was also reported to have been on China's wanted list in connection with the Xiamen scandal. Asked where the wife Ms Lai and her son Lan Meng are now, the diplomat would-be defector Mr Chen said "no-body knows that more clearly than the Australian government". The Quanzhou Evening News reported that in July 2001, police intercepted a package sent to Mr Lan who was still at Quanzhou detention centre containing a note inserted in a toothpaste tube which read, in part: "Wife and son still in Australia, not arrested. Say nothing." |
| Posted by:Spavirt Pheng6042 |