The US authorities said Monday that they had arrested a Chinese researcher accused of smuggling of biological material in the country, the second case of this type in days.
The FBI said in a criminal complaint that the researcher, identified as Chengxuan Han, a Chinese doctoral student at the Faculty of Life Sciences and Technology of the Huazhong Science and Technology Technology in Wuhan, was arrested Sunday at Detroit airport.
According to the complaint, since September, it has sent four ships from China that contains biological material hidden to staff members in a laboratory at the University of Michigan, where it planned to spend a year completing a project. The authorities said they made false statements about shipments when federal agents interrogated her when she arrived in the United States from Shanghai.
Two Chinese citizens were accused last week after the FBI said it had been determined that one tried to smuggle a toxic fungus in the United States, also to investigate at the University of Michigan, he claimed. One, a university researcher, was arrested and remains in custody, while the other was denied entry to the United States last year and remains in general.
According to the complaint, the biological material has accused of smuggling, sometimes hidden between the pages of a book, is related to round worms and requires a government permit.
“It doesn’t seem dangerous in any way. But there are rules to send biological material,” a biologist from the University of California, Berkeley, who read the presentation of the Court, told Associated Press.
The complaint also alleges that they have eliminated the content of their electronic device three days before reaching Detroit.
“They have declared that he eliminated the ‘starting content’ while he was in the United States,” he says.
Han are in custody before a bail audience on Wednesday.
The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to an email application for comments outside business hours.
With respect to the two Chinese nationals who were previously accused, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China said last week that he was not aware of the situation, but that the Chinese government “has always required that Chinese citizens abroad comply strictly comply with local laws and regulations, while safeguarding their legitimate rights and interests in accordance with the law.”
The University of Michigan did not respond immediately to a request for comments on Monday outside business hours.
In a statement in response to the case last week, the university said it was cooperating with the Federal Police and that he strongly condemned “any action that seeks to cause harm, threaten national security or undermine the critical public mission of the university.”
