Questions and Arrests And a Cyberspace Petition
The men did not identify themselves, but Liu surmised they were from the secretive Ministry of State Security. For three hours, they asked politely about her essays and her Internet friends. She was nervous, and tried to buy time with long, rambling answers.
But as the questioning continued, Liu realized they were mainly interested in Li. They didn't seem to know much about him. They asked her to take them to him, but she couldn't remember his address. Then they thanked her and let her go.
Liu Di, known as the Stainless Steel Rat in cyberspace, still does not know the true identity of the man who presented himself as a fan and friend but who she now suspects was a police spy.
(Philip P. Pan -- The Washington Post)
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Relieved, Liu returned to her dorm. But the nightmare was just beginning. The next morning, the college summoned her to the security office again. This time, uniformed Beijing police officers were waiting. They told her only that she was suspected of a crime and took her to Qincheng Prison, a notorious facility for political prisoners.
Liu was terrified -- and confused. Why had the State Security agents released her the night before? Why were their rivals in the police department now involved? The mystery deepened when the police began interrogating her. Unlike the agents, they seemed to know all about Li. They knew about his plan to start a party, the platform she had edited for him and even the conversation about the bomb threat, Liu recalled. But to her surprise, they attributed all of Li's ideas to Jiang, the heating company employee.
The officers interrogated Liu seven or eight times over the first several weeks, and they implied that Li, Wu and Jiang had been arrested, too.
At one point during the questioning, Liu had to explain that an essay she wrote about "the Persimmon Oil Party" was only satire and that no such organization existed. But the officers didn't spend much time on her writings, and one investigator even told her there was nothing wrong with them, she recalled.
Instead, they pressed her to incriminate Jiang. Liu had met him in person only once. But frightened and under pressure, she agreed with the officers as they described him as an extremist willing to use violence to overthrow the government. "The police wrote it down, and I signed," Liu said, her voice trailing off. "I didn't dare not to."
As the months passed, sitting in a small cell with three other women, one of them a convicted murderer, Liu struggled to make sense of her situation. Her family was not allowed to visit, and a lawyer told her she faced a 10-year sentence if convicted of subversion. College and the Internet seemed far away.
But outside prison, news of her arrest was spreading. Her friends in cyberspace launched a petition drive, which attracted thousands of signatures. Some Internet users began adding "Stainless Steel" to their online names in a gesture of defiance. Human rights groups and foreign governments lobbied for her release.
On Nov. 28, 2003, days before a visit to the United States by Premier Wen Jiabao and more than a year after they were detained, the government released Liu and Wu. The same day, a court convicted Jiang, 38, of subversion and sentenced him to four years in prison.
Announcing the news, a human rights group in Hong Kong said a friend of Li's had contacted them and told them he had been freed, too. But Liu heard something different from the prosecutor handling her case. He told her Li was still in prison and couldn't possibly be released given the charges against him.
Looking for a Ghost In a Shadowy World
Liu was bewildered by the conflicting information. Over a quiet dinner one night, her father proposed a theory: Li might have been an informer for the police.
He pointed out that prosecutors described Wu and Jiang as her co-defendants in court papers but had chosen to handle Li in a separate, unidentified case. He also noted that the families of each of the defendants had come forward and pressed for their release from prison -- except Li's.
Liu calmly accepted the suggestion that her friend might have been a police spy. But her mind raced through the possibilities: Was that why he wanted her to introduce him to others on the Internet? Was that why he kept asking her to edit the party platform? Did he set Jiang up, too?
