A US fugitive accused of raping his daughter and posting videos of the abuse online lived openly in China, even enjoying visits from his wife and registering at a local fitness club under his own name.
US court documents show that Kenneth John Freeman's wife, Maleka May, visited him in China more than once during his time as a fugitive.
May was detained in San Francisco on Thursday as she got off a plane from China. She denied having any contact with Freeman during his year on the run.
Information provided by the Powerhouse Gym also provided some clues about Freeman's several months spent living in Suzhou, where he was apparently employed as a computer expert.
Gym members said Freeman worked out almost every day and seemed friendly.
"He was the biggest guy in there. We figured he was some famous bodybuilder who had come to China to work," said Tom Stern of Berkley, California, a gym regular.
Freeman had been living in Seattle when he fled the US last year, months after his 17-year-old daughter told her mother he had assaulted her four years earlier. Video of the abuse is among the most widely downloaded child pornography in recent years.
Freeman, one of the US' most wanted men, was captured on Tuesday while trying to enter Hong Kong from China using his own passport.
He has been charged in Washington state with three counts of rape of a child and jumping bail. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted.
Freeman also faces federal charges on suspicion of producing and distributing child pornography.
Hong Kong police said Freeman, 44, worked as a computer specialist for a US company in Suzhou, a hub of high-tech manufacturing about a two-hour drive from Shanghai.
Stern and other members of the gym described Freeman as serious about working out, saying he often partnered another US man whose identity was not immediately known.
However, Freeman was not a regular at any of the bars and restaurants where most foreigners gathered, they said.
May, 37, who married Freeman in Las Vegas about nine months before he was charged, had posted Freeman's US$50,000 bond, the Seattle Post Intelligencer said.
She was arrested on Thursday for making false statements to federal agents, the Department of Justice's northern California office said in a statement posted on its Web site.
Reports said Chinese police had tipped off their counterparts in Hong Kong, which unlike mainland China, has an extradition treaty with the US.
On Friday, Freeman said he wanted to contest the extradition request, his lawyer, Stephen Ma, said.
The case has been adjourned until July 3.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
RSS