Peter Humphrey says Chinese officials tried to force confession

Humphrey, who is British, and his wife and business partner Yu Yingzeng, an American, were sentenced last August for illegally obtaining the private records of Chinese citizens and selling the information to clients including pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline. 

He said he and his wife did not bribe anyone or obtain information from any Chinese government employee.

“Neither of us has ever admitted to guilt as charged,” Humphrey told The Wall Street Journal after arriving in London on Wednesday. “Because of that I was constantly harassed in prison over signing a thing they called admission of guilt and statement of remorse.” 

A confession aired on Chinese television soon after he was first detained in 2013 was “heavily cut and pasted and narrated and what we said during those interviews was heavily distorted,” Humphrey said. 

He said he was told by a “civilian doctor” that he needed a prostate examination soon after he was detained but that despite asking prison officials “every single week” thereafter he was refused. He said he was diagnosed with a prostate tumour on 28 April. He is 59. 

“Some staff deliberately obstructed all my requests for appropriate medical attention,” he said. “These steps were withheld from me in a deliberate attempt to force me to sign a confession of crimes, both before and after the trial.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said on Thursday that China had not mistreated Humphrey and that his claims “are not true”.

Humphrey worked for Reuters in the 1980s and 1990s. He was seven months away from completing a two-and-a-half-year sentence, while his wife was set to be freed in July. Their sentences were reduced earlier this month. 

Their investigative firm ChinaWhys had been asked by GlaxoSmithKline to compile a report into the origins of a sex video involving the company’s former China head Mark Reilly. The video was sent to senior executives along with anonymous e-mails alleging corruption. ■