Ontario student arrested in US over airport photography case
University of Waterloo student Weichen Zeng was arrested in the United States in a case involving airport photography at the request of a contact whom he allegedly believed to be a Chinese government official. As Global News Canada reports, the Chinese citizen was charged with making false statements following a series of conversations with border officers and the FBI.
Incident at O'Hare Airport
An affidavit filed by an FBI agent in a Michigan court states that on April 21, the man was spotted at the FedEx cargo complex at Chicago's O'Hare Airport. According to the agent, the man was taking photographs, climbed onto a forklift and tried to open locked trailers. About ten days earlier, Zeng had entered the United States via the Ambassador Bridge.
According to the document, investigators later linked Zeng to a dark blue minivan with Ontario licence plates that was near the facility during the incident. When he again tried to enter the United States in the vehicle on August 23, he was questioned by border officers and later by FBI personnel as part of a counterintelligence investigation.
Accounts of the photography
According to court materials, Zeng initially said that he was photographing aircraft, and during the April trip he told customs officers that he was visiting his sister. While checking his phone, agents found photographs of aircraft, including military ones, as well as images of Zeng and other people in tactical clothing with weapons resembling rifles. The student explained that he was taking photos of aircraft models for a flight-tracking website and that the weapons were airsoft guns.
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During a subsequent interview, according to the agent's affidavit, Zeng said he had photographed aircraft landing at O'Hare from a public parking lot. He later said that he visited the FedEx complex and climbed onto a forklift to take photographs. He also spoke about a previous trespass onto FedEx property at Toronto's Pearson Airport, where he was caught.
During a third interview, Zeng stated that a Chinese contact through an aviation enthusiast website had instructed him to photograph certain aircraft, sent tail numbers and paid him $20 to $30 per photo. According to him, the contact sent SIM cards for communication, which he later destroyed, while deleting the correspondence and photographs.
Later, according to the account set out by the FBI agent, Zeng said that the explanation about rare aircraft was a cover. In fact, the contact was allegedly interested in transport logistics and photographs of specific locations near airports. Zeng also said that he received payments through transfers to an account at Bank of China. According to the agent, FBI personnel determined that the forum where Zeng allegedly met the contact did not exist.
Claims have not yet been tested in court
All claims presented in the affidavit have not yet been tested in court. Former Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer Chris Mathers said that Chinese security services often try to recruit people through online forums. In his view, the described tasks could have been a test of whether the person could later be used as a source of information.
