In January 2023, federal prosecutors quietly dropped a case against a New York City police officer whom they had accused of spying for China and carrying out the country’s transnational campaign of repression.
Yet the ordeal would continue for the officer, Baimadajie Angwang, according to a new federal lawsuit. The Police Department commenced an internal investigation of Mr. Angwang, a Marine Corps veteran who was born in China, based on the federal charges that had just been dismissed. He was then fired in January 2024, about six months after he did not show up to a mandatory disciplinary hearing.
The suit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, claims that the department tried to give Mr. Angwang a 1,700-question “sham investigatory interrogation” at the hearing. Mr. Angwang says he was the subject of retaliation, discrimination and malicious prosecution, and names the U.S. government, the City of New York, and several current and former Police Department officials as defendants.
Mr. Angwang said in a statement to The New York Times that his career as a police officer had been “brought to a halt as a direct result of the government’s irresponsible use of its prosecutorial power.”
“Being accused of spying against a country I love — and have proudly fought for and served — is heartbreaking,” Mr. Angwang said.
A spokeswoman for the Police Department declined to comment on Mr. Angwang’s suit, and referred to the department’s internal findings, which said he had failed to comply with questioning while under an official investigation.
Mr. Angwang, 39, is an ethnic Tibetan who received political asylum after moving to the United States as a teenager. Beijing sees Tibet, an autonomous region in China, as a part of its historical empire, but many Tibetans believe it was illegally annexed in 1951 and have fought for its independence.
The Chinese Communist Party views the Tibetan independence movement as an existential threat to Chinese stability. The Justice Department has accused China of recruiting agents in the United States to spy on Tibetans.
Mr. Angwang joined the Police Department in 2016 after serving in the Marines, including a stint in Afghanistan, and receiving an honorable discharge. He would later work as a community affairs officer in Queens.
He was arrested in September 2020 and charged with acting as an agent of a foreign government without having notified the attorney general, among other federal offenses. He was suspended from the Police Department and detained for more than five months at the troubled and violent Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
Prosecutors said Mr. Angwang had communicated often with two Chinese consular officials, including one who focused on “neutralizing sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority” of the Chinese government. But on Jan. 19, 2023, after what prosecutors said was a “holistic” consideration of new evidence, a federal judge dismissed the case. Mr. Angwang’s suit calls the communications “entirely innocuous” and necessary for ethnic Tibetans like him to secure a visa from the Chinese consular office.
The whole process, Mr. Angwang said in his suit, smacked of racial animus. He said the investigation was retaliation for speaking out against the prosecution.
The case, Mr. Angwang said in his statement, was an example of the government “using the legal system to unfairly target racial groups it views with unwarranted suspicion.”
Santul Nerkar is a Times reporter covering federal courts in Brooklyn.
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