TOKYO (Reuters) – Chinese authorities have indicted a Japanese employee of Astellas Pharma Inc, who had been detained in China since March 2023 on suspicion of espionage, the Japanese pharmaceutical company said on Wednesday.
The Japanese Foreign Ministry said a Japanese man in his 50s who was detained in Beijing last year was indicted in mid-August, without identifying the person, but Astellas said he was an employee.
Following the detention, China formally arrested the Japanese businessman in October, further straining bilateral ties that have long been plagued with a territorial issue over a group of tiny East China Sea islets.
“We will keep on demanding the early release of this Japanese national,” a Foreign Ministry official told Reuters.
(Reporting by Mariko Katsumura, Kaori Kaneko, Kiyoshi Takenaka; editing by Jason Neely and Elaine Hardcastle)
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