THE US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said Monday that the U.S. government continues to discuss with China the possible release of three U.S. citizens held in Chinese prisons.

“I don’t want to get into the details, but we are very actively talking about it,” Mr. Blinken said during an interview with CBS News.

They are David Lin, 67, a pastor imprisoned since 2006; Kai Lee, 60, who has been serving a ten-year prison sentence for espionage since 2018; and Mark Swedan, a Texas businessman who was convicted in 2019.

Washington considers that all three of them have been unjustly imprisoned.

According to Mr. Blinken, the US government is committed to continuing to work to resolve their cases. “Not only did I raise [το ζήτημα]I had long discussions” about their affairs, the head of US diplomacy said in the interview he gave after completing his trip to Beijing, the first by the US Secretary of State in five years.

Their release would be “a very important and positive development and we are working intensively” on it, he added.