On Monday, the Belgian prosecuting court rejected an appeal by a Canadian woman of Chinese descent accused of engaging in espionage activities for a third country. The court decided to extend her pre-trial detention for another month.
According to a spokesperson for the Belgian Federal Prosecutor’s Office, the woman is suspected of engaging in espionage activities for a third country and being involved in criminal organizations. The investigation into this case is still ongoing, and a trial date has not been set yet.
The suspect, who has Chinese heritage and Canadian nationality, previously worked as an intern at the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) in Mons, Belgium. She was arrested on July 25th and is currently being held in custody with no possibility of bail.
During the arrest, the police searched her apartment in Mons and her office at SHAPE. It has not been confirmed which country she is accused of spying for or the specific information she is alleged to have accessed.
The identity of the defendant has not been publicly disclosed by Belgian authorities. Earlier reports from Reuters cited an anonymous security source who identified the suspect as “Claire Z.,” a woman in her thirties who worked in the IT department at SHAPE.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) conducted an open-source investigation and suggested that the woman is likely Biwei Zhang according to her LinkedIn profile. Zhang is a system engineer with an economics background who worked as a data scientist at the National Research Council of Canada in 2017, an economist at Statistics Canada from 2018 to 2022, and has been a system engineer at the Canadian Space Agency since May 2022.
A spokesperson for SHAPE previously stated that there are “no indications” that the alleged activities disrupted NATO’s military operations. Applicants for the NATO internship program typically need to obtain security clearances issued by their respective governments in advance.
Canadian Minister of Public Safety Gary Anandasangaree has pledged to investigate whether the individual had ever worked for any Canadian governmental agency and review the existing security screening processes in Canada.
In response to the decision to extend her detention, Claire Z.’s lawyer did not immediately respond to Reuters’ email requests for comments. The office of the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs has also not responded to inquiries from Dajiyuan regarding this matter.