US failing its prisoners in China after Russia swap, says anguished family

Nelson Wells Jr., a 51-year-old American, has been languishing in a Chinese prison for over 10 years on minor drug charges. His parents, who spoke to Newsweek, are angry and hopeless at the U.S. government’s failure to secure his release while they’ve watched higher profile detainees walk free in Russia.

Wells Jr., who is from New Orleans, Louisiana, was arrested in May 2014 in China and sentenced to life. His term was reduced to 22 years in 2019, but he will not be freed until 2041.

That is if Wells Jr. can muster the fortitude to stay mentally and physically committed to getting back his freedom. His parents, Nelson Wells, a U.S. Army veteran who served from 1974 to 1994, and mother, Cynthia, who recruited for the Army and worked for the Department of Defense (DOD) for 28 years, spoke with Newsweek about their son’s diminishing spirits and increased medical episodes.

The younger Wells’ health has “significantly declined” the past decade. He suffers from severe epileptic seizures, high blood pressure and mental health trauma. He’s the only American, let alone Black American, in his current prison and has reportedly been mentally and physically harassed, according to his parents.

“We’ve gone through a lot and basically the only thing that’s keeping us going is our faith in God,” Nelson Wells told Newsweek.

In early August, a multi-national prisoner swap included Americans Paul Whelan and Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, being freed from Russia.

Detained Americans in China aside from Wells Jr. include Long Island businessman Kai Li, Orange County pastor David Lin, and Houston native Mark Swidan who was arrested on dubious drug charges in 2012 and sentenced to death with reprieve in 2019.

In February 2022, Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) player Brittney Griner garnered international headlines when she was detained in Russia and sentenced to nine years behind bars for drug charges after being caught with vape cartridges. In December 2022, she was released in a prisoner exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Nelson Wells called the widespread attention to Griner’s situation “peculiar and unfair” to individuals like his son whose whereabouts were unknown to his family for nearly a year-and-a-half following apprehension.

“I believe that because of their status, who they know and who they are, they get more attention,” he said. “What I’m saying is, why can’t we get that same attention? We are still American citizens. We should be fighting to get not just a selective group back but everybody.”

He added that unlike him and his wife, Griner never served the U.S.

“I don’t remember Brittney Griner making any sacrifice,” he said, his voice hardening. “All she does is play basketball. And if I’m wrong, I apologize. Would you tell me where the value is?”

Wells Jr. wrote a letter to Griner following her release, saying she inspires hope. His parents said it’s unclear whether the letter was ever delivered.

He also mentioned former basketball player Shaquille O’Neal in the letter. The pair knew one another in their youth in Hawaii and Germany while their fathers were on military tours.

Newsweek reached out to representatives for Griner and O’Neal regarding the letter and for comment on Wells’ situation. No responses were received at the time of publication.

Nelson Wells said that the situation has tormented his family, causing personal anguish that led to depression. He still feels “a ball of frustration” towards the country he served.

“You don’t want to say the wrong thing and make people angry [and] lose their support, but at the same time sometimes we just have to tell the truth,” he said. “And the truth of the matter is, I don’t feel that my country is doing enough.”

He added: “It makes me wonder. If I was a high-profile person who was in the limelight, an athlete that won gold medals and this and that and the other—would y’all look at my child? If I was politically connected would y’all look at my child? If I was a millionaire…would y’all look at my child? I’m just a law-abiding American citizen, a Black American citizen, that has done the best that he could for his country.”

National Urban League President Marc Morial, an ex-New Orleans mayor, has known the elder Wells since he was 3 years old. Finding out about the Wells family’s financial situation and desperation, he began reaching out to his contacts.

“I’ve done what I can,” Morial said. “These things are difficult because I was part of the advocacy around Brittany Griner. So many folks in the higher profile cases get the most attention from the president and from the State Department.”

He admits that name recognition “plays a huge role” regarding resources and pressure put on the government to circumvent the “statecraft component.”

“These things don’t happen without trades,” Morial said. “That’s the hard thing, right? The hard thing is that China and Russia, particularly in other countries, they want to trade people for people.

“It’s not just about arguing the merit. I think China could care less about whether he was unfairly accused or not. He’s just a political pawn in a power game between countries. It’s like a POW [prisoner of war] except it’s a gunless war.”

It’s been estimated that more than 200 U.S. citizens at various stages of prosecution remain wrongfully detained in China, according to John Kamm, chair of the San Francisco-based nonprofit Dui Hua Foundation, which seeks clemency and better treatment for at-risk detainees, American or otherwise. The exact number remains unclear.

A U.S. State Department official told Newsweek that the department does not publicly disclose the number of cases determined to be wrongful detentions due to privacy concerns and the sensitivity of ongoing efforts to secure the release of all wrongfully detained U.S. nationals.

“We have no higher priority than the safety and security of U.S. citizens overseas,” the official said. “Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken, Ambassador [Nicholas] Burns, and other senior U.S. government officials have and will continue pressing for the immediate and unconditional release of wrongfully detained U.S. citizens in their meetings with PRC [People’s Republic of China] officials. The U.S. mission in China will continue to request access to U.S. citizens detained in the PRC to ensure we can provide consular services as set forth in the Vienna Convention.”

Lifesavings Spent

Wells Jr. ended up in China after an accident in Japan where he lived with his now ex-wife and two children. He was riding his moped when a vehicle traveling the wrong way down a street crashed into him, resulting in several injuries that required over a year of recuperation.

He sustained a head injury that led to seizures. Dedicated to finding a quicker cure, Wells Jr. traveled to China for medical aid.

After exhausting his options and finances, he was on the verge of returning home when—as his father describes—the details become murky. He, according to his father, got roped in with unknown individuals and eventually charged for attempting to smuggle drugs out of China, which to this day he has adamantly denied.

Whenever the parents and son talk on the phone, any mention of the charges or prison sentence or details surrounding his imprisonment will lead to calls immediately being disconnected by authorities.

Call quantities and durations have changed throughout Well Jr.’s imprisonment as he’s bounced around different prisons. In the first six years or so, his father said calls were sparse, every three or six months. Within the past year, they’ve been allowed to converse three times every month, for five minutes per call.

“We know that it’s more important for him to hear our voice and to update him on what we’re trying to do versus trying to hear the story,” Wells said. “So, we let that be and I don’t think any of us will find out the true story until Nelson is back on American soil.”

The process has proved more arduous than Nelson and Cynthia have ever dreamed. They lacked major connections and exhausted most of their own finances on legal fees, totaling between $70,000 and $80,000.

Cynthia told Newsweek she spent countless nights over a number of years searching online for lawyers, lawmakers or anybody else willing to look into their son’s case.

“China is a country ruled by law,” Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in the U.S., told Newsweek. “The judicial authorities will handle the criminal suspects strictly in accordance with the law, treat them equally regardless of their nationality, and protect their legitimate rights and interests.”

Pengyu did not address questions from Newsweek about the nature of the charges against Wells Jr. or the number of Americans wrongfully detained in China.

The Wells family, now living in the Shreveport–Bossier City metropolitan area of Louisiana, has reached out to local and national political figures for help in amplifying their son’s story and negotiating a release.

That has included Republican Senators Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and New Jersey GOP Representative Chris Smith.

“Senator Cassidy has met with the Wells family and has worked to advocate on their behalf,” a spokesperson for the senator told Newsweek. “He has raised the issue of Nelson’s release at multiple levels of the Chinese government, including with Minister Liu Jianchao of the International Department of the CCP.”

Smith, meanwhile, told Newsweek that the State Department “should press hard” for Wells’ release given his medical issues.

“It should be their top priority over the next several months,” he said. “But there also needs to be more effort made to bring home all unjustly detained Americans in China—some who have languished in prison for over a decade and are not as well-known as Evan Gershkovich or Brittney Griner.”

Smith is chair of the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which is hosting a hearing September 18 on securing the freedom of unjustly detained Americans in China.

Difference Between China and Russia

Western countries, such as Canada and Australia, have had success with securing the release of some of their citizens from China.

“However, the U.S. struggles to find a workable strategy. The last time a U.S. citizen was publicly released from China was in 2022. The lack of progress with securing the release of Americans from China underscores the complexity of the problem,” Elizabeth Richards, director of hostage advocacy and research of the Foley Foundation that works to free Americans unjustly held captive abroad, told Newsweek.

The Chinese government wrongfully detains more Americans than any other nation. The Foley Foundation is currently tracking 12 Americans in China.

While the U.S. government has only designated three American citizens as wrongfully detained in China, an official list of those with that designation has not been provided to Newsweek or made publicly available otherwise.

The range of general detention in China ranges from a little over three years to 22 years, Richards said. The average length of detention for American citizens detained in China is nine years, with complications exacerbated by China’s lack of recognition of dual citizens, which can hamper access to U.S. consular services when detained.

Stuart Foster, an American detained for eight months in China and released in 2013, wrote in Prison Legal News that he served time in a racquetball-court sized room in Guangzhou among 30 natives—all of whom slept on the concrete floor without pillows and blankets. All men shared one hole in the ground as a communal toilet.

“The right of having a phone call upon arrest is unheard of, and most have no contact with the outside world throughout the entire time they are incarcerated,” Foster wrote a decade ago. “Many are jailed for months without ever being formally charged, then released without going to trial.”

China experts tell Newsweek that Chinese authorities—sometimes at local levels more so than orders delivered from Beijing—have routinely engaged in various forms of hostage taking for commercial purposes or in connection with domestic corruption cases, with prisoner exchanges rarer.

Unlike Russia, Chinese authorities are less inclined to entertain swaps but would rather pursue a transnational quid pro quo, Andrew Nathan, a political science professor at Columbia University, said.

“These days there is not much the West can plausibly provide to China of that sort, given how committed the West is to the trade war,” Nathan told Newsweek. “We don’t see prisoner releases like that anymore.”

Stanley Rosen, a political science professor at the University of Southern California, told Newsweek that Russian prisoner cases are more publicized and, in effect, draw more international attention than cases like Wells Jr. Also, no bilateral treaty exists to govern such a situation.

“China never admits any wrongdoing, and if a Chinese American or anyone else is arrested for spying for China, they simply deny any involvement in whatever they’re charged with,” Rosen said. “A prisoner exchange would imply wrongdoing by China. Russia has been interested in getting back arms dealers or, in the recent German exchange, an assassin. In that sense, Russia is engaged in far more serious and violent crimes than China.”

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