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NYU drops Chinese dissident spying claim

NYU and one of its law professors on Monday backed off claims that Chinese human-rights activist Bob Fu had planted spyware on an iPhone and iPad given to Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng.

NYU and Prof. Jerome Cohen made the accusations in June as they deflected charges from Chen that NYU was booting him under pressure from the Chinese government.

Fu, who at the time was portrayed as a pro-life radical trying to take advantage of Chen’s good name, was trying to monitor Chen remotely with compromised Apple devices, Cohen told Reuters at the time.

“These people supposedly were out to help him, and they give him a kind of Trojan horse that would have enabled them to monitor his communications secretly,” Cohen said.

The accusations resulted from a “misunderstanding” of how the software in the gadgets worked, NYU and Cohen said in a statement.

Chen arrived at NYU in May 2012 after making a dramatic escape from house arrest in China. He left the school this summer.

NYU said Chen’s exit had nothing to do with its under-construction campus in Shanghai.