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.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of