An American pastor who tried to set up a Christian training center in Beijing has been freed after 18 years in prison and is back on US soil. David Lin, 68, had been serving a decades-long sentence for what US authorities said were bogus charges of fraud, the BBC reports. He was one of three American citizens the State Department labeled "wrongly detained" in China and US officials had been pushing for his release for years, reports the New York Times. He was freed weeks after White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, in Beijing.
"I know that Jake Sullivan did raise my dad's case," Lin's daughter, Alice Lin, told Politico on Sunday. She said the State Department notified her on Saturday that her father had been freed and would arrive in San Antonio, Texas, the next day. "No words can express the joy we have—we have a lot of time to make up for," she said as she was on her way to the airport. In April, she told the Wall Street Journal that her father's sentence had been reduced to 24 years, "but he is elderly now, and I have cancer. We can't afford to wait."
Lin, a naturalized US citizen who was born in China and lived in Orange County, California, began regularly visiting China in the 1990s. He was arrested in 2006 after he helped an unsanctioned church construct a building. The fraud charge, which his supporters say is one typically filed in crackdowns on churches not controlled by the state, followed in 2009, the Times reports. The release, seen as an effort by Beijing to ease tensions with the US, comes days before a congressional hearing on American citizens unjustly detained in China, Politico reports. (More China stories.)
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