A US man wanted for ecoterrorism attacks in the US has been sentenced to three years in a Chinese prison for making illegal drugs.
Justin Franchi Solondz, 30, was given the sentence on Friday, said an official at the intermediate court in Dali, Yunnan Province.
It was unclear what drugs Solondz was accused of producing. His father, Paul Solondz, said that his son pleaded guilty last month.
Paul Solondz said his son was arrested in China during a drug sweep in March, and authorities later found 15kg of marijuana leaves buried in the courtyard of a home he rented. He said evidence at the trial in China suggested that his son used chemicals to press the marijuana leaves into a liquid, but the result was an unusable, toxic mixture.
He said Solondz did not want to dispose of the liquid for fear of damaging the environment, but that after his arrest, a friend tried to do him a favor by burying the leaves in the courtyard.
Solondz was indicted in California and Washington state in 2006 in connection with a series of arsons attributed to “the Family,” a collection of radical environmentalists aligned with the Animal and Earth Liberation Fronts, between 1996 and 2001. Attacks by the group caused more than US$80 million in damage, said the FBI, which called Solondz a domestic terrorist.
Investigators heard little of Solondz after his indictment, and the FBI issued a US$50,000 reward late last year for information leading to his arrest. At the time, the agency said he might be in Canada, Europe or Asia.
Early this year he surfaced in Dali, using a phony Canadian identification and an altered appearance, Mark Bartlett, the first assistant US attorney in Seattle, said on Saturday.
He was arrested in a drug investigation in March, and a few weeks later US federal prosecutors in Seattle were contacted to help confirm his true identity, Bartlett said.
The US has no extradition treaty with China and it’s not immediately clear when or how Solondz might be returned to the US to face charges, Bartlett said, but the US Justice Department has informed Chinese officials that it remains interested in prosecuting him.
Paul Solondz said his son did not flee the US to avoid prosecution. He said his son went to Italy for a wedding in 2005 and traveled from there, entering China with a valid visa and renewing it twice.
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