A six story glass facade building, second from left, is believed to be the site of a foreign police outpost for China in New York’s Chinatown, Monday April 17, 2023. On Monday, Feb. 10, 2025, a Boston man was acquitted of charges that he spied on dissidents in the Boston area. (Bebeto Matthews/AP)
(Tribune News Service) — A man charged with acting on behalf of the Chinese government by funneling information on Boston-area political dissidents to the Chinese Communist Party was found not guilty Monday by a federal jury.
Prosecutors had accused Litang Liang, a resident of Boston’s Brighton neighborhood, of providing information to Chinese officials about Boston-area residents and community organizations with pro-Taiwan and anti-Chinese government beliefs.
Liang faced charges of acting as an agent of a foreign government and conspiracy.
Between about 2018 and 2022, prosecutors said, Liang offered photographs and information on the dissidents to representatives of the Chinese government. He was accused of organizing a counter-protest against pro-democracy opposition to Chinese leadership, video recording a protester at a “Boston Stands with Hong Kong” march, and photographing other anti-government demonstrators in front of the Boston Public Library.
Liang was arrested in May 2023. After a two-week trial beginning in late January, the jury rejected prosecutors’ charge that Liang provided the information to Chinese officials and failed to register as an agent of the Chinese government, as required for people in the United States acting on behalf of a foreign nation.
In charging Liang, federal officials had said the case demonstrated the lengths the Chinese government would go to target political opposition.
“We will not tolerate the PRC’s efforts to interfere with public discourse and threaten civic participation in the United States,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen, of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said in May 2023 when a federal grand jury indicted Liang.
Then-U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins said Liang’s actions had potentially placed people at risk in Massachusetts and abroad.
A federal jury disagreed. After beginning deliberations Friday, the 12 jurors returned Monday and reached unanimous not-guilty verdicts on both charges, records showed.
“Justice has finally arrived,” Liang said through an interpreter after leaving federal court Monday, according to the Boston Globe. “I love my ancestral home, China. And I love the USA. I’m innocent.”
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