Swedish court convicts man for spying on fellow-Tibetans for China

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Spy(TibetanReview.net, Jun16, 2018) – A court in Sweden has on Jun 15 convicted and jailed a 49-year-old Tibetan man with Chinese father, finding him guilty of spying on fellow-Tibetans who are refugees in Sweden for China. The Södertörn district court, near Stockholm, has sentenced him to 22 months in prison.

The court said in its verdict that Dorjee Gyantsan had “carried out an extensive operation that put people of Tibetan origin in Sweden and their families in Tibet at significant risk”, reported thelocal.se Jun 15.

He was found guilty of infiltrating the Tibetan community to pass on information about them – including about their housing, family situation, political activities and meetings – to Chinese intelligence officers in exchange for money.

“Even if the information that the man gathered can seem trivial, it could have caused considerable damage to Tibetans both in Sweden and abroad,” Reuters Jun 15 quoted the judge as saying in a statement.

The court has found that Dorjee repeatedly met a Chinese intelligence officer in Poland, as well as had telephone contacts, to pass on information about Sweden’s Tibetan community.

The espionage reportedly took place from Jul 2015 to Feb 2017, when he was arrested.

The court documents were reported to show that Dorjee had left Chinese ruled Tibet for political reasons and fled to Nepal in 1997, before being granted a permanent residency permit in Sweden in 2002 as a resettlement refugee.

Born to a Tibetan mother and Chinese father, he was stated to have posed in the Scandinavian country as a supporter of Tibetan independence and to have taken active part in all its activities, all the time collecting information.

Dorjee has maintained innocence and vowed to appeal, claiming he did not know the person to whom he was passing on the information.

The prosecution’s evidence included witness testimonies about his contacts with the Tibetan community, as well as his phone and travel records.

Some 130 Tibetans live in the Scandinavian country, according to the organization Tibetan Community in Sweden.

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