US authorities accused five Chinese nationals of lying and trying to cover their tracks, more than a year after they were encountered in the dark near a remote military site in Michigan where thousands of people gathered for summer exercises. Had happened.
The five, who were University of Michigan students at the time, were not charged for what happened at Camp Grayling in August 2023. Rather, according to a criminal complaint, he is accused of conspiring to mislead investigators about the trip and delete photos from his phone. Filed in federal court.
There have been cases of Chinese college students taking photographs of critical defense sites in the United States, the FBI said in a court filing Tuesday.
There was nothing in the file revealing the whereabouts of the five persons.
“The defendants are not in custody. “Should they come in contact with U.S. authorities, they will be arrested and face these charges,” Gina Balaya, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit, said Wednesday.
In the summer of 2023, the five were encountered after midnight near a lake by a sergeant major of the Utah National Guard. “We’re the media,” one of the FBI said, “we’re the media,” before they gathered their things and agreed to leave the area.
The FBI learned that the men had booked a room at a nearby motel a week before they were spotted outside Camp Grayling, 200 miles north of Detroit.
Four months later, one of the men was interviewed by border officials at the Detroit airport before traveling to South Korea and China. He told investigators that he and others had gone on a trip to northern Michigan to see shooting stars, the FBI said.
The FBI said an examination of his external hard drive revealed two photos of military vehicles taken the same night of the encounter with the National Guard officer.
The other four men were interviewed after arriving in Chicago after flying from Iceland last March. The FBI said he admitted to being in northern Michigan in August 2023, but said it was to view a meteor shower.
He mentioned the National Guard officer but referred to him only as a “soldier,” a camper or a “good guy,” according to the criminal complaint.
Investigators said the men had talked on WeChat last December about clearing photos from their cameras and phones.
The FBI said all five men graduated from the University of Michigan last spring. They were part of a joint program between the university and Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, China.
In 2020, two Chinese nationals pursuing master’s degrees at the University of Michigan were sentenced to prison for illegally photographing sites at a naval air station in Key West, Florida.
(TagstoTranslate)US News(T)China(T)Military
