US Woman Held In China Over Spy Claims

Sandy Phan-Gillis' husband has set up a website from their home in Texas, insisting that his wife is "not a spy or a thief".

An American woman is being held in China on suspicion of being a spy, her family have revealed. The news that Sandy Phan-Gillis, from Texas, had been detained for the past six months came as President Xi Jingping left for an official visit to the US. A statement from her family, released online this week, said Ms Phan-Gillis is suspected of spying and stealing state secrets. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said she has been allowed six consular visits since mid-September, adding she was in good health and "cooperating with the investigation". Her husband, Jeff, insists his wife is innocent. "Sandy is not a spy or a thief," Mr Gillis said, according to the statement on the SaveSandy.org website: "She is a hard-working businesswoman who spends huge amounts of time on non-profit activities that benefit Houston-China relations." Mrs Phan-Gillis, a naturalised American citizen who is one of the Vietnamese "boat people" from the 1970s, was part of a trade delegation from Houston and was arrested while trying to cross from the southern city of Zhuhai to Macau on 19 March, her family said.

She was initially held under house arrested but was transferred to a detention centre over the weekend and is now being held in the southwestern city of Nanning, they said. "Sandy is in very poor health," the family statement said, adding that Mrs Phan-Gillis suffers from high blood pressure, high cholesterol and high blood sugar - it said she has been in hospital repeatedly since being detained. China is notoriously secretive, with its laws covering a broad range of subjects, varying from everything from industry data to the exact birth dates of state leaders. Information once held in the public domain can also be labelled "state secret" retroactively. While US consular officials have met the US citizen, her family and friends have not been given access to her, they say. Sky news