Three more Britons held in China to be deported
Three British tourists arrested in China on suspicion of viewing terrorist videos are to be released, authorities in Beijing have said.
The Foreign Office in London said the three would be deported on Friday, a week after they were arrested on a tour in northern China. Six other Britons who were arrested at the same time returned to the UK on Thursday.
The Britons were among a 20-strong group of foreigners arrested at Ordos airport while on a 47-day tour of ancient China. The group comprised 10 South Africans, who are understood to have been released, nine Britons and one Indian man.
Mystery had surrounded the arrests as local police refused to comment and foreign officials said only that the tourists were suspected of “criminal offences”. But on Thursday Zhang Xi, an official in Ordos in charge of dealing with foreigners, told the media: “These people are suspected of watching and spreading violent terrorist videos.”
On Friday the family of one couple from the group issued a statement saying they had been detained by mistake, possibly due to language-related misunderstanding, after watching a documentary about Genghis Khan, the ruler of the 13th-century Mongol empire.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: “Chinese authorities have said the remaining three British nationals detained in Ordos will be deported shortly. Our consular staff have visited the detainees and received assurances from the Chinese government about their health and treatment. The embassy is in regular contact with the Chinese authorities both in Ordos and in Beijing.”
Those arrested included Hoosain Ismail Jacobs, a 74-year-old former anti-apartheid activist who has lived in exile in Britain for more than 25 years, and Dr Feroz Suliman, a surgeon at the Waterfall hospital in Midrand, South Africa, and his wife, Dr Shehnaaz Mohamed.
The family of Jacobs and his wife, Tahira, said the group had visited the Genghis Khan Mausoleum in Ordos and watched a TV documentary about the notorious historical figure “to further their understanding of the region”.
“It can only be assumed that junior officials who made the initial arrest in Inner Mongolia made a mistake, due to perhaps their unfamiliarity of the English language. [We] wish to thank the senior Chinese authorities in Beijing for the swift manner in which they have resolved this unfortunate misunderstanding,” the family said in the statement.
“All members of the group are by their nature considerate and law-abiding citizens, with absolutely no criminal records whatsoever. The group have suffered an unfortunate and stressful ordeal and would now like to recuperate and spend time with their loved ones. They wish to express their thanks to the media for respecting their privacy so that they may get back to living their normal lives.”
he South African humanitarian aid agency Gift of the Givers, which has been working to secure the tourists’ release, has denied that the detainees have any links to terrorist organisations or criminal histories.
In a statement on its Facebook page, the group said conditions in the detention centre were not good and that relatives of those arrested had received little information. “The Chinese, now trying to find reasons for the detention suggested that some members were linked to a terror group, to a banned organisation, to watching propaganda videos in their hotel room,” it added.
An itinerary of the 47-day trip, seen by the Guardian, shows plans for an extensive tour of all the main tourist attractions in China, including the Yangtze river, Shaolin temple and Tiananmen Square. The tourists had planned to visit the square on Monday 20 July.
The itinerary shows that the group were staying at the luxury Crowne Plaza hotel in Ordos for the five nights before they were arrested. It is not known whether it was this hotel where the tourists were alleged by Chinese authorities to have watched terrorist videos.
The days before they were arrested were spent at the Genghis Khan mausoleum, according to the itinerary. The tour operator, China Odyssey Tours, had arranged to fly the group from Ordos to Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi province in central China, from where they were due to travel north to visit attractions including the Loess plateau, the mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor and the Luochuan loess.
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