NEW YORK (AP) — A real estate businessman who aided a Chinese effort to pressure an expatriate to return home has been sentenced to over a year in a U.S. prison.
U.S. prosecutors say Quanzhong An’s activities were part of the Chinese government's “Operation Fox Hunt,” which Beijing says is about pursuing people who have fled justice. Washington sees it as transnational repression, a term for governments working to silence dissenters beyond their borders.
“Quanzhong An acted at the direction of the (Chinese) government to harass and intimidate individuals living on U.S. soil as part of a pernicious scheme to force their repatriation,” Brooklyn-based U.S. Attorney John Durham said in a statement Wednesday.
Messages seeking comment were sent Thursday to China's embassy in Washington and consulate in New York. China has previously denied threatening its nationals abroad.
An, a 58-year-old Chinese citizen and legal U.S. resident, pleaded guilty last year to acting as an illegal foreign agent. He was sentenced to 20 months behind bars. He has served seven of them already.
“Mr. An is in my opinion, on balance, a very fine man and accordingly, seeing him return to prison for even one additional day is heartbreaking,” his lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, said Thursday. But he noted that prosecutors had sought a considerably longer prison term.
According to prosecutors and an indictment, An was the key U.S.-based player in a transcontinental effort targeting a former manager of a Chinese state-owned company. Prosecutors haven't named the man or the company.
Beijing has accused the man of embezzlement, identified him as an “Operation Fox Hunt” priority and asked law enforcement agencies worldwide to find and apprehend him, according to the indictment.
An, who lives in suburban Roslyn Heights, New York, showed up at the home of the target's son to try to find the father in 2017, the indictment said.
Then, in a series of recorded meetings with the son starting in early 2020, An leaned on him to secure his father's return to China. An said he that was trying to help the Chinese government communicate with the two, and that he would look good to Chinese officials if he could arrange the father's return, according to the indictment.
While acknowledging that a Chinese embezzlement case against the father and son was a legally frivolous pressure tactic, An told the son that Chinese officials were monitoring the family's relatives and would “keep pestering you” if the father didn’t return, the indictment said.
“Their intent is to make your life difficult,” the indictment quotes him as saying.
An even offered to pay back the man's allegedly ill-gotten gains, according to the indictment, and eventually arranged for a Chinese official to press the man's son by phone.
In recent years, the U.S. Justice Department has charged dozens of suspects with acts of transnational repression on behalf of China, Iran or other countries. On Thursday, a Manhattan federal jury convicted two men of conspiring to kill Iranian American journalist Masih Alinejad in what U.S. prosecutors claimed was a murder-for-hire plot financed by the Iranian government and foiled when police stopped the intended hit man's car. Tehran has denied involvement in any schemes to kill people in the U.S.
An was charged in 2020 along with six other people, including his daughter Guangyang An. She is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty last May. The current status of the other five isn’t immediately clear.
In a separate case in the same Brooklyn federal courthouse, three men were convicted in 2023 at the first trial surrounding U.S. claims about “Operation Fox Hunt.” Two of those defendants have been sentenced to prison; the third is awaiting sentencing.
FILE - U.S. and Chinese flags wave at Genting Snow Park, Feb. 2, 2022, in Zhangjiakou, China. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato, File)
ALEPPO, Syria (AP) — First responders on Sunday entered a contested neighborhood in Syria’ s northern city of Aleppo after days of deadly clashes between government forces and Kurdish-led forces. Syrian state media said the military was deployed in large numbers.
The clashes broke out Tuesday in the predominantly Kurdish neighborhoods of Sheikh Maqsoud, Achrafieh and Bani Zaid after the government and the Syrian Democratic Forces, the main Kurdish-led force in the country, failed to make progress on how to merge the SDF into the national army. Security forces captured Achrafieh and Bani Zaid.
The fighting between the two sides was the most intense since the fall of then-President Bashar Assad to insurgents in December 2024. At least 23 people were killed in five days of clashes and more than 140,000 were displaced amid shelling and drone strikes.
The U.S.-backed SDF, which have played a key role in combating the Islamic State group in large swaths of eastern Syria, are the largest force yet to be absorbed into Syria's national army. Some of the factions that make up the army, however, were previously Turkish-backed insurgent groups that have a long history of clashing with Kurdish forces.
The Kurdish fighters have now evacuated from the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood to northeastern Syria, which is under the control of the SDF. However, they said in a statement they will continue to fight now that the wounded and civilians have been evacuated, in what they called a “partial ceasefire.”
The neighborhood appeared calm Sunday. The United Nations said it was trying to dispatch more convoys to the neighborhoods with food, fuel, blankets and other urgent supplies.
Government security forces brought journalists to tour the devastated area, showing them the damaged Khalid al-Fajer Hospital and a military position belonging to the SDF’s security forces that government forces had targeted.
The SDF statement accused the government of targeting the hospital “dozens of times” before patients were evacuated. Damascus accused the Kurdish-led group of using the hospital and other civilian facilities as military positions.
On one street, Syrian Red Crescent first responders spoke to a resident surrounded by charred cars and badly damaged residential buildings.
Some residents told The Associated Press that SDF forces did not allow their cars through checkpoints to leave.
“We lived a night of horror. I still cannot believe that I am right here standing on my own two feet,” said Ahmad Shaikho. “So far the situation has been calm. There hasn’t been any gunfire.”
Syrian Civil Defense first responders have been disarming improvised mines that they say were left by the Kurdish forces as booby traps.
Residents who fled are not being allowed back into the neighborhood until all the mines are cleared. Some were reminded of the displacement during Syria’s long civil war.
“I want to go back to my home, I beg you,” said Hoda Alnasiri.
Associated Press journalist Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut contributed to this report.
Sandbag barriers used as fighting positions by Kurdish fighters, left inside a destroyed mosque in the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood, where clashes between government forces and Kurdish fighters have been taking place in the northern city of Aleppo, Syria, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
Burned vehicles at one of the Kurdish fighters positions at the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood, where clashes between government forces and Kurdish fighters have been taking place in the northern city of Aleppo, Syria, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
People flee the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood, where clashes between government forces and Kurdish fighters have been taking place in the northern city of Aleppo, Syria, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
A Syrian military police convoy enters the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood, where clashes between government forces and Kurdish fighters have been taking place in the northern city of Aleppo, Syria, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
Burned vehicles and ammunitions left at one of the Kurdish fighters positions at the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood, where clashes between government forces and Kurdish fighters have been taking place in the northern city of Aleppo, Syria, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)
