A Chinese Midnight Express?
Newsweek|August 19,2016

For four years, Beijing has kept an American jailed without a verdict. Now his mother fears he will die behind bars.

Jeff Stein
A Chinese Midnight Express?

ANY DAY NOW, Mark Swidan will find out how much more time he will spend in a Chinese jail. Or maybe not.

The 41-year-old Houstonian, a roving artist, photographer and aspiring businessman, was picked up in southern China four years ago on suspicion of being involved in a methamphetamine drug conspiracy. He was confined without bail for a year before being tried in a case in which the evidence against him was circumstantial at best, his advocates say. Now three years have passed, with judges repeatedly postponing a verdict—a possible sign, some close observers say, that the authorities may be troubled by the case. “The evidence against him is very flimsy,” says John Kamm, who runs a San Francisco foundation that focuses on human rights violations in China. “In my opinion, Mark Swidan is the victim of a terrible miscarriage of justice.”

Until his case is resolved, Swidan’s home will stay a detention center in Jiangmen in Guangdong province, near the Vietnam border, where summertime temperatures regularly top 110 degrees and many inmates “are forced to make silk flowers with harsh chemicals” for export, he’s told his mother. Katherine Swidan says her son, once a stocky high school wrestler, has lost nearly half his 220 pounds. Adding to his woes are mounting health problems, such as high blood pressure and skin infections, he says, and “lumps” that recently appeared on his neck that he fears might be cancerous because of his family’s medical history.

This story is from the August 19,2016 edition of Newsweek.

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This story is from the August 19,2016 edition of Newsweek.

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