The attorney for Robert Rhodes, a Homeland Security officer charged with violating a Chinese tourist's civil rights, contended that "intense political pressure" and greed are driving the case, which has attracted the attention of Chinese and US diplomats.
"It is clear to me that someone is attempting to use Robert Rhodes as a pawn in a much bigger game," attorney Steven Cohen said on Friday.
Responding to reports that Zhao Yan, 37, is suing the US for US$5 million following a beating at Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls, Cohen said his client was following Customs and Border Protection procedure when he used pepper spray and physical force to subdue the woman on July 21.
"Everyone's been talking about civil rights in this case," the lawyer said. "What about the rights of our officers to protect our borders as they have been trained to do, as we need them to do?"
Rhodes, 43, could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
Rhodes said in a statement that Zhao and two other women ran when he asked them to come into the inspection station at the bridge linking Niagara Falls, New York, and Niagara Falls, Ontario.
An affidavit by a senior Homeland Security agent cited witness accounts of Rhodes spraying Zhao's face, throwing her against a wall, kneeing her and striking her head on the ground.
The China Daily newspaper published a front-page photo of Zhao last Monday, showing her with one eye swollen shut and cuts on her forehead. The businesswoman was quoted as calling the US "the most barbarous" country she had visited.
The official Xinhua News Agency reported that China's foreign minister demanded in a phone call with US Secretary of State Colin Powell that US border officials be punished. Powell said he would "inquire into the issue," the agency reported.
Meanwhile, US Attorney Michael Battle said his Buffalo office received a letter from the Chinese ambassador to the US expressing gratitude that the incident was being taken seriously.
But Battle said the decision to charge Rhodes was made well before there had been any contact between US and Chinese officials, and before Zhao announced her intention to sue.
"None of that influenced us at all," Battle said.
Cohen estimated that Rhodes has processed more than 8 million people entering the US over his 17-year career.
"But now the same government that Officer Rhodes has committed most of his adult life to protecting finds itself under tremendous international pressure to prosecute Officer Rhodes," he said.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver