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Chinese police said they are investigating the detained artist and activist Ai Weiwei for "suspected economic crimes," while his family said on Thursday he was the innocent victim of a political witchhunt.
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The official news agency report that Ai faces a police probe for business-related crimes is unlikely to still the international political uproar about his detention and disappearance, and the departing U.S. Ambassador to Beijing, Jon Huntsman, has added his voice to the condemnations.
The burly, bearded Ai (pronounced "eye") had a hand in designing the Bird's Nest stadium for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and has juggled a prominent international art career with colorful campaigns against government censorship and political restrictions, often using the Internet.
"Police said late Wednesday they are investigating Ai Weiwei for suspected economic crimes in accordance with the law," the Xinhua news agency said in a brief dispatch issued on Wednesday just before midnight.
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Xinhua gave no other details of the allegations against Ai, who was stopped on Sunday from boarding a flight from Beijing to Hong Kong and taken away by border police, sparking condemnation from Western governments and Chinese human rights campaigners.
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He has not contacted his family since then.
"The economic crimes report is absurd, because the way he was taken and then disappeared shows it's nothing of the sort," Ai's older sister, Gao Ge, told Reuters by telephone.
"This is more like a crime gang's behavior than a country with laws," she said.
The U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman, who is soon leaving his post to consider a run as a Republican presidential contender, joined the fray earlier, another sign the case could fester into a diplomatic row between the world's two biggest economies.
"The United States will never stop supporting human rights," Huntsman said in a speech in Shanghai on Wednesday evening.
Future U.S. ambassadors "will continue to speak up in defense of social activists, like Liu Xiaobo, Chen Guangcheng and now Ai Weiwei, who challenge the Chinese government," said Huntsman, according to a transcript on the website of the U.S. consulate in Shanghai.
Liu is the jailed dissident who won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize, prompting outrage from China. Chen is a rural legal campaigner held in house arrest since being released from jail in 2010.
Ai's mother, Gao Ying, rejected the charges of "economic crimes," which could cover violations such as tax avoidance, and said they were being used to stifle his activism.
"If he's not released, this will be the start of a long struggle," she told Reuters by telephone. "But they still haven't notified us why he was taken or where he is."
Ai's campaigning has included voicing support for the Nobel winner Liu and an online campaign to collect the names of children buried in a earthquake in southwest Sichuan province in 2008, many in schools that he and others said were poorly built because of corruption.
