China sentences Houston businesswoman Sandy Phan-Gillis in spying case

Sandy Phan-Gillis, a Houston businesswoman who was detained in China two years ago as she accompanied city officials on a routine business trip, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison on spying charges Tuesday. less Sandy Phan-Gillis, a Houston businesswoman who was detained in China two years ago as she accompanied city officials on a routine business trip, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison on spying ... more Photo: HONS Photo: HONS Image 1 of / 14 Caption Close China sentences Houston businesswoman Sandy Phan-Gillis in spying case 1 / 14 Back to Gallery

A Houston businesswoman who was detained in China as she accompanied city officials on a routine business trip in 2015 was sentenced to prison for three and a half years on espionage charges Tuesday and ordered deported.

The judge presiding over the closed-door trial in Nanning, the capital of the Guangxi region in southern China, didn't specify when Sandy Phan-Gillis would be deported. That suggests that she could be credited with having already served more than half of her sentence, making her eligible for parole, according to her lawyer, David Zhang, and other people familiar with the case.

The decision, seen by some as a reflection of improving relations between Beijing and Washington, could mean that Phan-Gillis might be returned home in the coming weeks.

"I think she will be released and she will be back in the U.S. fairly soon," said John Kamm, a human rights activist in China who has worked on the case and heads the Dui Hua Foundation in San Francisco.

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Phan-Gillis was detained in March 2015 while leading a trade delegation including Houston's former mayor pro-tem Ed Gonzalez. The group were passing through an immigration control connecting mainland China with Macau, when she suddenly disappeared.

The Chinese Consulate in Houston didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. A State Department official confirmed the sentencing, but said consular officers were not permitted to view the trial and that the agency remained concerned about her welfare.

"We are in favor of any result that allows her to return home to her family soon," the official said in a statement.

Kamm attributed the sudden movement in the case, after two years of near paralysis, to a renewed push by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson who reportedly raised the issue with his counterparts during a visit to Beijing in March.

It comes as the two countries are wrestling with North Korea's nuclear ambitions and after what was viewed as a successful visit between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping earlier this month.

It may indicate a greater focus by Washington on American citizens detained in China, Kamm said, rather than on the fate of Chinese political dissidents and religious activists, a thorn in the communist country's side and in its relationship with the U.S. Some 100 Americans are currently imprisoned in some form in China.

"We have seen a major shift in the relationship between these two countries in the last month," Kamm said. "I see this particular case as reflective of a Trump administration human rights policy that puts American citizens first."

Phan-Gillis pleaded guilty in court to the espionage charges and is being held in a police detention center, instead of prison, during the 10-day window for filing an appeal. It is unlikely Chinese prosecutors will challenge the sentence given that it was likely approved at the top level of government, Kamm said.

Her return to Houston would mark an end to a saga that has not only pressured the two countries, but puzzled those who know the woman once billed as the poster child of good U.S.-China relations.

The 57-year-old Vietnamese refugee of Chinese descent spent decades forging strong partnerships with the communist country, leading dozens of delegations to China and hosting Chinese groups in Houston. She founded the city's Chinese New Year festival, and headed the Houston Shenzhen Sister City Association.

But to Chinese authorities, Phan-Gillis was a spy, going to Nanning in 1996 to conduct an espionage mission, according to an indictment her lawyers saw last year. Beijing accused her of recruiting Chinese citizens to spy for foreign agencies and spying herself in 1997 and 1998, though more detailed allegations were never made public.

Lawyers in China are generally forbidden to publicly discuss national security cases without approval.

Phan-Gillis' husband, Jeff Gillis, has repeatedly maintained his wife's innocence. He declined to comment Tuesday.

But he has previously said that his wife's passport shows that she did not visit China at all in 1996.

He has also said that she told him after she was arrested that her detention was related to people she knew two decades ago who were from the province of Guangxi but whom "she knew in the United States, not in China."

In a 16-minute phone call in September 2015, their only verbal communication since her arrest, she told him that, according to Chinese authorities, these acquaintances "have been violating their law, and the law is catching up to them," Gillis said last year.

A United Nations human rights panel last year demanded her release after finding that she had been arbitrarily detained and was denied access to lawyers.

Later last year, Phan-Gillis told her lawyers that she felt forced to admit to the espionage mission but that the confession was "faked" because she was threatened with life imprisonment during daily interrogations. She even fainted and had a heart attack, causing her to be hospitalized twice, according to her lawyer and consular officials.

American experts in such cases and those who knew Phan-Gillis in Houston have been confounded about what raised Beijing's ire.

The judgement Tuesday does little to explain why the government pursued charges against her in the first place on allegations that were two decades old, or whether there was any truth to them.

"This case has put a lot of outside pressure on the Chinese," said Jerome Cohen, an expert on the Chinese legal system and professor at New York University. "They don't want this clogging up their agenda, with South China Sea and North Korea questions to cooperate on and climate change going badly. These cases are annoyances and should be dismissed ... but it's been a curious case from the beginning."

Phan-Gillis was initially held for six months under residential surveillance, allowing police to detain her without charges while they investigate national security breaches.

But her plight wasn't publicly revealed until her husband launched a brief media campaign to coincide with Xi's visit to Washington in September 2015. That same month Phan-Gillis was moved to a formal detention center and last July she was charged with spying in the Nanning Intermediate People's Court.

Securing her release garnered bipartisan support, including letters from Texas Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn to the Chinese ambassador.

Some in Congress even suggested issuing a travel advisory for China warning about possible risks for Americans doing business there.

Under Xi, at least nine foreigners have been arrested on allegations of spying and the government approved a sweeping national security law in 2015 that grants authorities broad discretion about what constitutes espionage.

That year, China released a Houston geologist who had been imprisoned on charges of stealing state secrets. Phan-Gillis is currently the only American in China accused of being a spy for the U.S.