A Prisoner of China. An American Scandal. | The Free Press

He had been in Guangzhou a few weeks Katherine wasn t sure how long and on his last night there, November 13, 2012, he took his driver and interpreter to dinner to thank them for carting him around. 

After dinner, he returned to his room at the Changping Hui Hotel, in Dongguan, near Guangzhou. He was on the phone with his mother when she heard a bang on the other end of the line, a rush of voices, and then nothing. She had no idea where he d gone. 

I was frantic, Katherine told me. We were in her one-bedroom apartment in Luling, Texas, 45 minutes south of Austin. About two weeks after that happened, finally somebody from the State Department called me and said he s been detained.

Prosecutors in nearby Jiangmen had accused Swidan of colluding with a Mexican cartel to make methamphetamine.

Almost everyone outside China including the White House and the United Nations Human Rights Council considers the charges a farce. 

via www.thefp.com

This is why I don’t visit China. Or Mexico either, frankly. Too much of a coward, or too risk averse.