2008: Wo Weihan, spy?
November 28th, 2013 Headsman
On this date in 2008, Chinese biochemist and businessman Wo Weihan was shot for espionage along with his alleged co-conspirator Guo Wanjun.
Wo had been resident in Austria since 1990, and his daughters Chen Ran and Chen Di were Austrian citizens. In 2004, he returned to his native soil to launch a medical equipment firm in Beijing.
Wo was arrested in China in January 2005 and accused of passing “state secrets” to Taiwan and the U.S. He didn’t have a lawyer until 2006 — by which time he had produced a coerced confession that he tried in vain to retract — and the 2007 trial took place in secret, so the case against him was troublingly opaque at the time of his execution. The verdict publicly released in March 2008 even included such trifles as “discussing the health of senior Chinese leaders” — an actual crime in China but awfully difficult to accept as a factor in a capital case.
“The lack of transparency does nothing to reassure us that the court’s conclusion was the right one,” said a Dui Hua Foundation spokesman.
Allegedly, Wo got information about Chinese ICBMs from missile expert Guo Wanjun, and passed drawings to Taiwanese and American intelligence. Chinese state media have claimed that Wo’s wife was able to open a restaurant in Austria with the payoffs.
His daughters mounted a last-ditch clemency campaign involving European Union officials, Austrian President Heinz Fischer, and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, all to no avail.
On this day..
- 1499: Edward, Earl of Warwick, the last Plantagenet claimant - 2019
- 1857: Two surviving members of the Aiken Party - 2018
- 1405: Astorre I Manfredi, former lord of Faenza - 2017
- 1798: Dennis Nugent, for child rape - 2016
- 764: St. Stephen the Younger, iconodule martyr - 2015
- 2006: Sanjaya Rowan Kumara, with "signs of life" - 2014
- 1828: James "Little Jim" Guild - 2012
- 1721: Cartouche, French bandit - 2011
- 1783: Johanna Catharina Höhn, by Goethe's vote - 2010
- 1871: Louis Rossel, Théophile Ferré, and Sergeant Bourgeois, Communards - 2009
- 1950: James Corbitt, the hangman's mate - 2008
- 1922: Six Greek former ministers of state - 2007
Entry Filed under: 21st Century,Businessmen,Capital Punishment,China,Death Penalty,Espionage,Execution,History,Ripped from the Headlines,Shot,Spies,Taiwan
Tags: 2000s, 2008, november 28, wo weihan
