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Speaker 1: The Michael Berry Show. Last week, I interviewed a fellow named Mark Soudan. And you may have seen his name or seen him on Fox or a number of different national outlets. He was sort of taken captive by the Chinese government while he was doing business there, given a death sentence and kept in very, very harsh conditions for over a decade. He has been released. His mother lives in Houston and... He was our guest. We intended to play it in the morning, and I completely forgot. So I'm going to take the first part of today's show to share this interview with you, because I think it's important to understand who and what China really is. Mark Sweden was arrested in November 2012 while on a trip to Guangdong province in China to purchase building materials. And this story is so crazy, it's hard to believe, but it's true. And rather than me tell you, I'm going to have Mark Sweetan tell you. Mark, first of all, was this your first visit to China?
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Speaker 2: Yes, sir, Michael, it was.
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Speaker 1: And tell me about, you know, China is historically probably as unlike the United States, of course, you could factor in some African nations, as anything you could imagine, literally the other side of the world. Tell me about the buildup, why you were there, and then let's go through the horrible things that happened to you.
00:01:25
Speaker 2: Okay. Well, I've been in Asia for years, back and forth, basically around the world. Import-export, I started on a whim from some money I received when my dad was accidentally killed in a hospital mistake. And I went to a wedding in Vietnam, a friend's wedding, and I went to the dentist. And my dental school friends at Texas A & M Told me to ask around about the drill bits and the little, I guess, just basically a little stainless steel and stuff that's disposable because, you know, they're in the arm and leg. And so I did that and turned it into a business, basically. It spiraled out from there. The first time I went to China, though, that was for ADM Helium of Houston. And I still have the contracts. They said there was a Syrian shortage in the USA, and they were pretty much right on ticket on it. So here, not being anything man-made, you'd have to source it from China. So I took these contracts. I contacted a lot of different contacts, and they said go to China. I was in Hong Kong, and I was in Macau. I took a ferry, and this has a lot to do with it. And I went to China. looking for helium. And I did have multiple properties and I did purchase, I did actually purchase in Hong Kong. All kinds of different stuff for building houses, stuff like that. I was there. That's why I purchased it. I wasn't just on the way for that. I was actually on the way just for the helium. So leading up to that, I crossed into China and I'm in a hotel room, which they want foreigners to put their passports down. And that's the U.S. government property, and I've been around the world, and I'm not going to do that. So I never did. I just said, I'll move to another hotel, or you can take this $ 50 and not worry about it. So what they do is they send, and this is all our big businessmen who do that, like you said, they send your passport information goes directly to the police department and up the chain of the communists. Like, they have... Really, on one block, you might have one person for each 10, 20 houses that relates to another person, to another person, and up to the police. Because you stayed at a friend's house, you're supposed to report. Two days later, it's maybe 9 or 10 o'clock at night. I hear a bang, one bang on the door. Then there's about 20 bangs on the door. They were using a battering ram to break down this hotel room door. Granted, this is one of the largest hotel complexes in China. We're talking, you know, 2,000, 3,000 rooms there. And they break the door down. I got, let's see, about 15 or 20 police, not uniformed, not English speaking, no badges, running through the room, pointing guns at me, screaming Chinese. We're screaming back and forth to each other because I don't speak Chinese at that point. And, um, yeah, it kind of spiraled out of control from there. And, uh, They arrested me. Well, they don't really call it arrest. They call it detainment. And they finally admitted they were police after the guy shoved a gun in my face a couple times, and I kind of pushed it out of my face because their training was just so awful. It just didn't seem like they were the police. I would have happily opened the door for them without breaking it down kind of thing. Without me even resisting, I found they were police. They pushed me out of bed. A couple of them, they're little guys. I'm a big guy. And they, you know, proceeded to put the knees in the back, trying to, you know, I'm basically almost smothered in that pillow. And they picked me up, took me downstairs, and put me in this huge van that was camouflaged. It's like double the size of a Mercedes Sprinter. Camouflaged van with some strange-looking satellite gear on the top. We went down to the parking garage. In the meantime, there were several other foreigners somewhere in the complex, and they were Chinese Canadians, and there was a couple of Hispanics from Mexico. But they were not all together. What they did was they took us to a basketball court two hours away or so, and tied everybody to a pole, each one to his own pole out there. sat on the ground, wouldn't tell anybody anything. And as they did that, they would bring in more and more guys. They brought a couple foreigners from this place. They brought a couple of Chinese, a couple of what turned out to be Canadian Chinese. I didn't know at the time. Wouldn't talk to anybody. We sat maybe on the ground. I'd seen two or three hours. Then piled everyone back into this van. There wasn't anybody to speak. And we proceeded to drive about four or five hours away to... close to the Vietnam border, you know, to a police station.
00:06:43
Speaker 1: Mark, I'm going to get you to hold right there. It's a perfect stopping point. This story is getting a lot of attention. We're going to hear all of it coming up.
00:06:50
Speaker 2: I said arrest me or take me to Texas because I'm ready to get out of this state. I think Michael Berry rocks. The Michael Berry Show.
00:06:59
Speaker 1: I like it. A lot of Americans end up in China doing business. And sometimes they're reminded that that is a totalitarian regime. Mark Sweetan was there, and all of a sudden they scoop him up, won't tell him who they are, and he's being hauled off. He doesn't know what the hell is going on. Because of this story, and Americans need to hear it. But we were at the point where they have grabbed him and they're taking him in the van. And as I said to you earlier, I'm not going to interrupt you. You tell the story. I would like to know how you're feeling at each step of this, because obviously nobody's excited about it. But are you confused? Are you simply scared? Are you thinking this is the end? Had you had eight drinks before that? Because people don't think about the fact that you might have been hammered at that point. You might have been exhausted. You might have been sick to your stomach. But anyway, go ahead.
00:07:53
Speaker 2: No drinks at all. I was actually watching TV. I bought some bootleg DVDs downstairs. I was watching The Walking Dead or something like that. Um, I was eating a piece of cheesecake. That's, that's what it was. Um, they, there was nothing in the room. There's, you know, there was, I had some business documents and, and they, they tried to say I was trying to flee, uh, later on in the case, which all my bags weren't packed. My toiletries were out in the bathroom, all this very, just very unprofessional. Even when I came in the room, um, no training. Uh, so back to where we're at, we're in this van. Um, Everyone's kind of silent, and the police are yelling at people in Chinese. They don't really have anybody who speaks English on this stand, or it's very rudimentary. Basically, shut up, we are police, kind of thing. So I'm thinking, okay, this is BS. I know the U.S. will get me right out of this thing. I know I haven't done anything wrong. So I wasn't thinking end of the world. I wasn't thinking death, because I didn't have anything to do with this. I knew what I was there for. And.
00:09:05
Speaker 2: So we drive. We end up at a police station, their form of a police station, in a small town, which, granted, I am the first American who was ever in that small town, arrested-wise or detained-wise. So they drove me to a place I'd never been. They start to question everyone one by one. Well, somebody's handcuffed to this, and they uncuff you, drag you to a desk, cuff you to the desk, trying to be somewhat personal. They brought in a a terrible translator, and they asked me, do you know anything about ice drugs? I said, what the hell is ice drugs? They kept trying to say the name in Chinese. They kept trying to say, they didn't even know what they were talking about. I said, I don't know what you're talking about. Then they brought a confession out, and it was written in all Chinese and told me to sign it. That's not going to happen. I've been all over the world and, you know, I know how even the ambassadors to the government to you name it, they've all said my knowledge of international law and such and such was impressive. That's from working around the globe. Even Vietnam is a communist country. I had been there several times. Never had a problem. So they asked me to sign this confession. It's written in Chinese. I say, I want a lawyer present. I want this translated properly by a certified translator. And I'd like my consulate present. They said, this is China. You don't get a lawyer. This is China. We're not going to call your consulate to be here. And this is China. It's the law that you sign a confession. Now, if anybody's ever studied any consular agreements, that's not the law. But they're just lying. I refused over and over again. They put me to the side in a little room, and they proceeded to bring those other guys back and forth. They then bring everybody to a room and they put all our personal belongings on the table and say, okay, everybody get your personal belongings. Okay, no problem. I grab my phones. I know I've never spoken to these people in my life. Everyone's kind of looking at each other. I can see these guys know each other. Everyone's kind of looking at me as in, why am I here? When they arrested me, I dress, you know, pretty decent. I'm not going to say I'm a... Anyway, I'm wearing jeans and a dress shirt. And, you know, when they took me down, I threw my blazer on. That's just kind of my usual style. And so the rest of these guys are in T-shirts and whatever. And we just kind of don't match each other. You know, you get it like that. So they tell everybody, grab their personal belongings. I grabbed mine. It was like an iPad, a BlackBerry, and one little– those Nokia phones back in the days because– That's what you use in China because BlackBerrys don't work in China because they can't hack those things. So that was the end of that. And then they started bringing guys back into the rooms, back and forth, back and forth. Again, asked me to sign a confession, refused. Pushed me back in another room and tried to tell me to kneel on literally a bamboo stick, if you can believe this, to put pressure on my knees. I'm not doing that. Period. I'm just like, no, that's just not going to happen. So sit me back in a chair. You know, this is you're getting the low down, Michael, here. Sit me in a chair and they're all in my face. And I'm six foot two, about 225 solid. If you see my old pictures back then, the guy keeps asking me if I'm U.S. military. I said, I sure as hell aren't Chinese military. And he slaps me across the face as hard as he can, which kind of just infuriated me. Granted, these guys handcuff you in the front with about six inches of chain in front of you. They're not like U.S.-made handcuffs. So I jumped on the guy right away, immediately. I can only do so much with my handcuffs, and I'm getting kicked and stomped by the rest of them. But I did leave a mark on this guy. I ended up sinking my teeth into his cheek because I was so infuriated. And that wasn't about all I could do to cover my head down. So they pulled me off of them. They handcuffed me to a water pipe, which the ceiling is not quite eight feet tall. So at me being six foot two, the water pipe's probably around seven foot tall. So it wasn't like I was hanging like one of the little guys who had been doing. And I'm sitting there for 14 hours or so, 13, 14 hours, hanging like that while they're questioning everything else. They then, I guess they talked to one of the other guys who could speak English, who was a co-defendant in the end. They told him to come in there and tell me to sign a confession. He didn't know me. He comes up to me and says, hey, they want me to tell you to sign a confession. And I asked him, did you sign that confession? He said, yeah. Do you read Chinese? No. I said, I think you just killed yourself. And I said, I'm not signing. That was bad. So after so many hours. Hold right there.
00:14:48
Speaker 1: Mark Sweetin, hold right there. He was held in a Chinese prison. You're going to find out in a sentence. It's the end of the world.
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Speaker 2: As we know it. The Michael Perry Show. End of the world? Come on. I feel fine.
00:15:04
Speaker 1: Mark Sweden was arrested in November of 2012 while on a trip to China to purchase building materials. The Chinese authorities accused him of involvement in international drug trafficking, despite evidence that he wasn't even in China at the time of that alleged offense. The Chinese judicial system, such as it is, sentenced Mark Sweden to death in 2019. In November of 2024, he was released from his detention along with two other American citizens as part of a prisoner swap with China. Sounds to me like they grabbed these guys, accused them of horrible things, threatened them with death, and then say, well, we're going to kill him unless you give back some people who spied on you, America, for us, which is how they run this little game. So Mark Sweetant, Let's go through how they sentence you to death and how you're dealing. You still don't have an attorney. You still, I guess, have you had any representation? Is anybody from the U.S. able to help you at this point?
00:16:10
Speaker 2: At this point, no. The way their system works is they arrest you first. They put you in this detention camp. The first Americans in there, it's a horrible, horrible place. You don't have running water. You don't have light. You have 24-hour lights. It's Houston-type weather, hot and cold, humid and everything. If you look at the map, they're pretty much lined up. It's a course of measure is what it is. You have a window, two tiny windows that are like 25 feet up, so there's no airflow. And then you have the ceilings that are kind of open where it's raining through. We don't have running water. We don't have hot water. We don't have AC or heat. There's no beds. You sleep on it. Concrete, they call it a bed, but it's just a raised concrete platform. You're sleeping on the concrete. You don't have a toilet. You have a hole in the floor. You have 32 guys in basically about, I'd say about 30 feet or less by about 10 feet. You've got communist propaganda playing all day. And you've got forced slave labor for American companies, even putting on the American price tags. Big business. I can name the products. I actually got some of the products out to my mom, and an attorney tried to contact them. Of course, it was no comment, but I can prove what I said. I'd take a lie detector on national TV any day to do it. So you've got this big forced slave labor in there. What they do is they question you every day for 37 days and decide to arrest you or not. You've got like a 99% arrest rate there. 99.9 conviction rates. So they question you, they pull you out at 8 in the morning, they keep you there until 5, 6 p.m., and they just want, basically what they want is they want a confession. The U.S. consulate came about two days after, two or three days maybe, maybe four, I don't remember, and the time kind of just blurred at that point. The first gentleman who came, I don't know if we want to name names or not, He told me, his name was Chris Romans, and I'm working on getting my Freedom of Information Act, and I'd love to share it with you, Michael, and the world. He told me, oh, this is a serious crime. You've been accused of, they said you were carrying 62 kilos of methamphetamine. There was nothing on me. There was nothing in my room. In fact, in the end, we found out there was nothing on any of those guys. There was only two Chinese guys that were eight hours away, which I had no contact with anybody, never had anybody's phone numbers. My passport, what it comes down to is, this guy tells me, oh, this is punishable by death. They don't kill Americans here. He said, oh, yes, they do. And this and that. He was very unhelpful. I tried to give him my mom my email logins and this and that so she could get help. He wouldn't do it. As soon as he started to write something down about 10 Chinese police around, the guy just didn't have the balls to stand up to him. A few days later, the consulate chief, Steve F. Bolt, horrible person, comes in and tells me, why don't you just confess? You know you did it. I asked him if he was a communist. if he was red or red, white, and blue. And he was getting real pissy. I said, why don't you do your dance job, go get my passport from them, it's U.S. government property, and prove to them all of this is impossible. I was never in this country. He says, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. That was the end of our conversation there. So if you're asking about there's no legal help, he could have solved this problem because it's before the arrest, which takes place 37 days later. He doesn't do anything. They come once a month after that. So during this time, the Chinese police are trying to pull me out for confession literally every day for 90, 80, 90 days. And they tell me, oh, you're not going to confess. We'll see after seven days of, okay, no food for you, which, by the way, you'd be happy with no food there for seven days. I said, okay. I said, okay, that's the game you want to play. And they shouted at me, we don't serve hamburgers. I said, that food's unedible to me. I said, I wouldn't give that to my dog. And they said, we don't serve McDonald's and KFC like American prisons do. And I'm like, okay. I said, well.
00:21:08
Speaker 1: I didn't know they served that in American prison. That would be an upgrade from what I.
00:21:12
Speaker 2: Understand they served.
00:21:13
Speaker 1: Mark, I don't want to run out of time. Let me ask you, you get a death sentence.
00:21:19
Speaker 2: Right.
00:21:19
Speaker 1: And then they say they're going to suspend that pending review, which I understand is kind of common.
00:21:24
Speaker 2: Well, the death sentence took six and a half years to give me. Right.
00:21:29
Speaker 1: And how did they deliver the news that you had a death sentence?
00:21:32
Speaker 2: Oh, they mark you all in the court. And this all stems down to Canada arresting that CEO for the USA. Yeah. And holding, because I do have a dual nationality. I was just born in the blizzard, literally, across the border from Detroit. So I kept the Canadian a long time ago. I mean, no big deal to be dual.
00:21:56
Speaker 1: And.
00:21:58
Speaker 2: So they'd march everybody in the court. We're talking six and a half years later. What they do is give you a three-month extension. Every three months, they say you're supposed to have your sentence. They extended it 21 times. So it ends up being an extra six years, six and a half years.
00:22:15
Speaker 1: Mark Sweetan is our guest. Mark, I have one more segment, but I have a note and I completely forgot. You have a GoFundMe or some sort of a a community way that people can support you through all of this. Can you tell us where that is?
00:22:30
Speaker 2: It is help.marksweetan.org.
00:22:36
Speaker 1: And that is S-W-I-D-A-N, help.marksweetan.org. We will continue our conversation with Mark Sweetan about this horrible situation that he was caught up in. I hope people will hear this and think twice about whether or not they want to be long-term engaged in business with a country where this can happen to you. I really think it's in America's national interest to bring as much business back to the United States and avoid empowering the Chinese government with our dollars and our trade. Mark Sweetin is our guest tonight. Kirk Cameron of the famous Growing Pains.
00:23:24
Speaker 2: Man, if it weren't for Growing Pains, I wouldn't be on The Michael Berry Show.
00:23:27
Speaker 1: You have a road. The Michael Berry Show.
00:23:29
Speaker 2: Our road.
00:23:30
Speaker 1: We are talking to Mark Sweetan, who's been on a national conversation. He was arrested in November of 2012 on a trip to China to buy building materials. They gave him the death penalty. They suspended that and kept him in prison. where he was until November of 2024 when he was released. Talk me through that timeline of how you find out that you're finally going to be released.
00:23:57
Speaker 2: Oh, well, there's so much in between. I don't know if you want to know about even how the public court works. You know what?
00:24:04
Speaker 1: I've got eight minutes. You tell me, however, I want to get as much out of you before the show's over.
00:24:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, we might have to do a couple more in that 12 years. But, you know, in the first court, when we go to court, They basically ask you, do you want to confess? If not, your sentence is going to be basically 10 times worse. No, I'm not confessing. You don't have evidence. They say, okay, we read the evidence. You have more. You're screwed, basically. So I told them, go ahead and read it. I'm not confessing anything. They had no evidence on me. I basically made a jackass out of them in the court. So the next, it's a five-day court trial. They kick my consulate out of the court, which is illegal. even by their law. They won't let them back in. So we can't take notes. We went to court again to bring more evidence. There's no evidence against me. They kicked my counsel out again. I get sentenced to death. They march you into the court. They sentence you to death. They bring you back to your cell. You immediately will file an appeal. They never gave my appeal in to the court. The appeal comes back. This is when the arrest of the Meng Wanzhou or whatever her name was, CFO, happened. And they arrested a lot of Canadians around the country because of it and gave them all kinds of crazy sentences. Secretary of State Blinken actually had a phone call me in a consulate meeting and asked if I needed to be traded with those two Canadians. Yes, I'm going to be here another five years or I'm going to be dead. I'll tell you one thing. Never once did I actually think I'd be dead. I mean, I've got broken bones. I've got this, that. It's a long story. Numerous. crazy thing that happened there. And needless to say, they don't trade me to trade two Canadians, and I'm a dual citizen. They get home. They get paid millions of dollars. They've stayed six months to a year, and six months in those places, maybe a year in house arrest. I'm in the worst deployable conditions ever. I'm the first American ever sentenced to death in China. I was actually sentenced to death twice, Michael. And then sentenced to a life sentence. After this Even the U.N. ruled it. Unlawfully detained in the U.S. finally did in 2019. I ended up staying until 2024. I was not transferred to a prison until 2023. I'm the longest guy in a detention camp besides bin Laden's bodyguard. This is because over a thousand times of trying to get confessions and evidence, I mean, they never got anything. That American flag shirt you see anywhere in those pictures? That went through court, every court. Oh, wow. That was the one I walked off the plane on. That was me wearing that, and I still got it here. They tried and tried to get me to change out of it, to drag me out of it, and I would not do it. I was defiant the whole time, and it paid off. There's so many men who have come out of China in the last 50 years that are on record. Anything else is not on record, even past that. I'm one of them. We've got about 200 other guys over there. Slave labor, all that is big business. Anybody thinking to do business over there, think again. We created this monster in China, and it's turned against us. Without the big business going there for profit, this wouldn't happen. They'd probably still be in the Stone Age over there.
00:27:37
Speaker 1: And they were until very recently. In fact, If they weren't allowed into the World Trade Organization, that's the moment it all changes for the rest of the world. That's when they become empowered and financed to, in many cases, take over. In many cases, sow discord, do evil things, increase their totalitarian regime at that time, which was beginning. It's awful to see. although the story of China for the 20th century is not a pretty picture for any of it. Mark, are there people in America who deserve credit for helping spring you and get you back home that you have not mentioned?
00:28:17
Speaker 2: You know, Mel Gibson was a very strong advocate of me.
00:28:23
Speaker 1: That does not surprise me.
00:28:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I've never got a chance to thank him, so if you listen, thank you, Mel. That was a surprise. Senator Ted Cruz, Congressman Clown, they were on it. There is Roger Carson, Ambassador Roger Carson. They call him Captain America for a reason. He was the head of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs. And we have my mom, who is my hero on this. She's the one who never gave up. When everybody told her to give up, when everybody told her to shut up, she wouldn't shut up. And, you know, being resilient in there is the way to go. And even the special forces and the presidential envoy, when I was on the plane, they said, how did you know to do what you did, to just resist everything, to starve yourself, to cause trouble, to do whatever you had to do in there? Because that's what we're trained for. It just came instinctual.
00:29:23
Speaker 1: All right, let me ask you. I have two minutes left. Let's talk about your return into the free world. I get the sense that has not been easy. This is very disruptive. This is very traumatic. Talk to me about how that has been.
00:29:38
Speaker 2: It's been really rough. My goal is, I mean, I want to get back on my feet. I don't feel as traumatized as people would think, but people think the government cuts you a check. I have POW status, just like a military POW, but I don't have POW benefits. I went from living in Memorial, Houston, and having properties and saving all my money all my life to coming home to zero, everything liquidated, to no credit, to no driver's license, to no identity at all. And trying to start over at 51 when you were doing really good at 37, it's just not possible on your own. I need help. And it's not provided. There's some little assistance here and there from some hostage organizations that are good. And, but you know, there's a lot of money that goes to a lot of places, but it doesn't go to us. We're far and few between the guys who actually return and it doesn't get to us. If it were me and I wanted to do my own organization, which I've thought of it and I've talked to many people, I know I could do better. I know I could, there's, there's too many people. Everybody needs a tax write-off. They could donate the right way instead of donate to a lot of these places. Um, You come back, especially gone as long as I have, and since the death twice and life once, the only person in history around the world this has happened to. After 12 years, everything is gone. My mom is still here. She believed in me all the time. My ex-girlfriend, who is now still back with me, stayed with me and stuck through it the whole time and always believed in me. But even her and I, we have problems right now because it's very hard for me to get on my feet. I want to be married to her. I want to have a house again. I want to build a business again. Maybe I want to do a foundation. I definitely need to take care of my mom, who is handicapped now since I came home. She's on $ 20 a month food stamps the whole time I've been gone. No disability, no SSI, no anything like that. So, I mean, we're really struggling. And when we come back to this economy, I'm sticker shock on a brisket alone in the grocery store. We'll just.
00:31:52
Speaker 1: I can tell you, Mark, that's been relatively recent. I am up against a break. I appreciate you sharing your story. People need to understand there is a cost to trade with China on their terms for so long that a lot of people see up close and it ain't pretty. It is not pretty. There will be a long-term cost to pay. for cheaper consumer goods. And I don't think very many Americans quite realize that just yet. If you like the Michael Berry Show and podcast, please tell one friend. And if you're so inclined, write a nice review of our podcast. Comments, suggestions, questions, and interest in being a corporate sponsor and partner can be communicated directly to the show at our email address, michael at michaelberryshow.com or simply by clicking on our website, michaelberryshow.com. The Michael Berry Show and Podcast is produced by Ramon Robles, the King of Ding. Executive Producer is Chad Nakanishi. Jim Mudd is the Creative Director. Voices, jingles, tomfoolery, and shenanigans are provided by Chance McLean, Director of Research, is Sandy Peterson. Emily Bull is our assistant. Listener and superfan contributions are appreciated and often incorporated into our production. Where possible, we give credit. Where not, we take all the credit for ourselves. God bless the memory of Rush Limbaugh. Long live Elvis. Be a simple man, like Leonard Skinner told you. And God bless America. Finally, If you know a veteran suffering from PTSD, call Camp Hope at 877-717-PTSD and a combat veteran will answer the phone to provide free counseling.
Speaker 1: The Michael Berry Show. Last week, I interviewed a fellow named Mark Soudan. And you may have seen his name or seen him on Fox or a number of different national outlets. He was sort of taken captive by the Chinese government while he was doing business there, given a death sentence and kept in very, very harsh conditions for over a decade. He has been released. His mother lives in Houston and... He was our guest. We intended to play it in the morning, and I completely forgot. So I'm going to take the first part of today's show to share this interview with you, because I think it's important to understand who and what China really is. Mark Sweden was arrested in November 2012 while on a trip to Guangdong province in China to purchase building materials. And this story is so crazy, it's hard to believe, but it's true. And rather than me tell you, I'm going to have Mark Sweetan tell you. Mark, first of all, was this your first visit to China?
00:01:02
Speaker 2: Yes, sir, Michael, it was.
00:01:05
Speaker 1: And tell me about, you know, China is historically probably as unlike the United States, of course, you could factor in some African nations, as anything you could imagine, literally the other side of the world. Tell me about the buildup, why you were there, and then let's go through the horrible things that happened to you.
00:01:25
Speaker 2: Okay. Well, I've been in Asia for years, back and forth, basically around the world. Import-export, I started on a whim from some money I received when my dad was accidentally killed in a hospital mistake. And I went to a wedding in Vietnam, a friend's wedding, and I went to the dentist. And my dental school friends at Texas A & M Told me to ask around about the drill bits and the little, I guess, just basically a little stainless steel and stuff that's disposable because, you know, they're in the arm and leg. And so I did that and turned it into a business, basically. It spiraled out from there. The first time I went to China, though, that was for ADM Helium of Houston. And I still have the contracts. They said there was a Syrian shortage in the USA, and they were pretty much right on ticket on it. So here, not being anything man-made, you'd have to source it from China. So I took these contracts. I contacted a lot of different contacts, and they said go to China. I was in Hong Kong, and I was in Macau. I took a ferry, and this has a lot to do with it. And I went to China. looking for helium. And I did have multiple properties and I did purchase, I did actually purchase in Hong Kong. All kinds of different stuff for building houses, stuff like that. I was there. That's why I purchased it. I wasn't just on the way for that. I was actually on the way just for the helium. So leading up to that, I crossed into China and I'm in a hotel room, which they want foreigners to put their passports down. And that's the U.S. government property, and I've been around the world, and I'm not going to do that. So I never did. I just said, I'll move to another hotel, or you can take this $ 50 and not worry about it. So what they do is they send, and this is all our big businessmen who do that, like you said, they send your passport information goes directly to the police department and up the chain of the communists. Like, they have... Really, on one block, you might have one person for each 10, 20 houses that relates to another person, to another person, and up to the police. Because you stayed at a friend's house, you're supposed to report. Two days later, it's maybe 9 or 10 o'clock at night. I hear a bang, one bang on the door. Then there's about 20 bangs on the door. They were using a battering ram to break down this hotel room door. Granted, this is one of the largest hotel complexes in China. We're talking, you know, 2,000, 3,000 rooms there. And they break the door down. I got, let's see, about 15 or 20 police, not uniformed, not English speaking, no badges, running through the room, pointing guns at me, screaming Chinese. We're screaming back and forth to each other because I don't speak Chinese at that point. And, um, yeah, it kind of spiraled out of control from there. And, uh, They arrested me. Well, they don't really call it arrest. They call it detainment. And they finally admitted they were police after the guy shoved a gun in my face a couple times, and I kind of pushed it out of my face because their training was just so awful. It just didn't seem like they were the police. I would have happily opened the door for them without breaking it down kind of thing. Without me even resisting, I found they were police. They pushed me out of bed. A couple of them, they're little guys. I'm a big guy. And they, you know, proceeded to put the knees in the back, trying to, you know, I'm basically almost smothered in that pillow. And they picked me up, took me downstairs, and put me in this huge van that was camouflaged. It's like double the size of a Mercedes Sprinter. Camouflaged van with some strange-looking satellite gear on the top. We went down to the parking garage. In the meantime, there were several other foreigners somewhere in the complex, and they were Chinese Canadians, and there was a couple of Hispanics from Mexico. But they were not all together. What they did was they took us to a basketball court two hours away or so, and tied everybody to a pole, each one to his own pole out there. sat on the ground, wouldn't tell anybody anything. And as they did that, they would bring in more and more guys. They brought a couple foreigners from this place. They brought a couple of Chinese, a couple of what turned out to be Canadian Chinese. I didn't know at the time. Wouldn't talk to anybody. We sat maybe on the ground. I'd seen two or three hours. Then piled everyone back into this van. There wasn't anybody to speak. And we proceeded to drive about four or five hours away to... close to the Vietnam border, you know, to a police station.
00:06:43
Speaker 1: Mark, I'm going to get you to hold right there. It's a perfect stopping point. This story is getting a lot of attention. We're going to hear all of it coming up.
00:06:50
Speaker 2: I said arrest me or take me to Texas because I'm ready to get out of this state. I think Michael Berry rocks. The Michael Berry Show.
00:06:59
Speaker 1: I like it. A lot of Americans end up in China doing business. And sometimes they're reminded that that is a totalitarian regime. Mark Sweetan was there, and all of a sudden they scoop him up, won't tell him who they are, and he's being hauled off. He doesn't know what the hell is going on. Because of this story, and Americans need to hear it. But we were at the point where they have grabbed him and they're taking him in the van. And as I said to you earlier, I'm not going to interrupt you. You tell the story. I would like to know how you're feeling at each step of this, because obviously nobody's excited about it. But are you confused? Are you simply scared? Are you thinking this is the end? Had you had eight drinks before that? Because people don't think about the fact that you might have been hammered at that point. You might have been exhausted. You might have been sick to your stomach. But anyway, go ahead.
00:07:53
Speaker 2: No drinks at all. I was actually watching TV. I bought some bootleg DVDs downstairs. I was watching The Walking Dead or something like that. Um, I was eating a piece of cheesecake. That's, that's what it was. Um, they, there was nothing in the room. There's, you know, there was, I had some business documents and, and they, they tried to say I was trying to flee, uh, later on in the case, which all my bags weren't packed. My toiletries were out in the bathroom, all this very, just very unprofessional. Even when I came in the room, um, no training. Uh, so back to where we're at, we're in this van. Um, Everyone's kind of silent, and the police are yelling at people in Chinese. They don't really have anybody who speaks English on this stand, or it's very rudimentary. Basically, shut up, we are police, kind of thing. So I'm thinking, okay, this is BS. I know the U.S. will get me right out of this thing. I know I haven't done anything wrong. So I wasn't thinking end of the world. I wasn't thinking death, because I didn't have anything to do with this. I knew what I was there for. And.
00:09:05
Speaker 2: So we drive. We end up at a police station, their form of a police station, in a small town, which, granted, I am the first American who was ever in that small town, arrested-wise or detained-wise. So they drove me to a place I'd never been. They start to question everyone one by one. Well, somebody's handcuffed to this, and they uncuff you, drag you to a desk, cuff you to the desk, trying to be somewhat personal. They brought in a a terrible translator, and they asked me, do you know anything about ice drugs? I said, what the hell is ice drugs? They kept trying to say the name in Chinese. They kept trying to say, they didn't even know what they were talking about. I said, I don't know what you're talking about. Then they brought a confession out, and it was written in all Chinese and told me to sign it. That's not going to happen. I've been all over the world and, you know, I know how even the ambassadors to the government to you name it, they've all said my knowledge of international law and such and such was impressive. That's from working around the globe. Even Vietnam is a communist country. I had been there several times. Never had a problem. So they asked me to sign this confession. It's written in Chinese. I say, I want a lawyer present. I want this translated properly by a certified translator. And I'd like my consulate present. They said, this is China. You don't get a lawyer. This is China. We're not going to call your consulate to be here. And this is China. It's the law that you sign a confession. Now, if anybody's ever studied any consular agreements, that's not the law. But they're just lying. I refused over and over again. They put me to the side in a little room, and they proceeded to bring those other guys back and forth. They then bring everybody to a room and they put all our personal belongings on the table and say, okay, everybody get your personal belongings. Okay, no problem. I grab my phones. I know I've never spoken to these people in my life. Everyone's kind of looking at each other. I can see these guys know each other. Everyone's kind of looking at me as in, why am I here? When they arrested me, I dress, you know, pretty decent. I'm not going to say I'm a... Anyway, I'm wearing jeans and a dress shirt. And, you know, when they took me down, I threw my blazer on. That's just kind of my usual style. And so the rest of these guys are in T-shirts and whatever. And we just kind of don't match each other. You know, you get it like that. So they tell everybody, grab their personal belongings. I grabbed mine. It was like an iPad, a BlackBerry, and one little– those Nokia phones back in the days because– That's what you use in China because BlackBerrys don't work in China because they can't hack those things. So that was the end of that. And then they started bringing guys back into the rooms, back and forth, back and forth. Again, asked me to sign a confession, refused. Pushed me back in another room and tried to tell me to kneel on literally a bamboo stick, if you can believe this, to put pressure on my knees. I'm not doing that. Period. I'm just like, no, that's just not going to happen. So sit me back in a chair. You know, this is you're getting the low down, Michael, here. Sit me in a chair and they're all in my face. And I'm six foot two, about 225 solid. If you see my old pictures back then, the guy keeps asking me if I'm U.S. military. I said, I sure as hell aren't Chinese military. And he slaps me across the face as hard as he can, which kind of just infuriated me. Granted, these guys handcuff you in the front with about six inches of chain in front of you. They're not like U.S.-made handcuffs. So I jumped on the guy right away, immediately. I can only do so much with my handcuffs, and I'm getting kicked and stomped by the rest of them. But I did leave a mark on this guy. I ended up sinking my teeth into his cheek because I was so infuriated. And that wasn't about all I could do to cover my head down. So they pulled me off of them. They handcuffed me to a water pipe, which the ceiling is not quite eight feet tall. So at me being six foot two, the water pipe's probably around seven foot tall. So it wasn't like I was hanging like one of the little guys who had been doing. And I'm sitting there for 14 hours or so, 13, 14 hours, hanging like that while they're questioning everything else. They then, I guess they talked to one of the other guys who could speak English, who was a co-defendant in the end. They told him to come in there and tell me to sign a confession. He didn't know me. He comes up to me and says, hey, they want me to tell you to sign a confession. And I asked him, did you sign that confession? He said, yeah. Do you read Chinese? No. I said, I think you just killed yourself. And I said, I'm not signing. That was bad. So after so many hours. Hold right there.
00:14:48
Speaker 1: Mark Sweetin, hold right there. He was held in a Chinese prison. You're going to find out in a sentence. It's the end of the world.
00:14:56
Speaker 2: As we know it. The Michael Perry Show. End of the world? Come on. I feel fine.
00:15:04
Speaker 1: Mark Sweden was arrested in November of 2012 while on a trip to China to purchase building materials. The Chinese authorities accused him of involvement in international drug trafficking, despite evidence that he wasn't even in China at the time of that alleged offense. The Chinese judicial system, such as it is, sentenced Mark Sweden to death in 2019. In November of 2024, he was released from his detention along with two other American citizens as part of a prisoner swap with China. Sounds to me like they grabbed these guys, accused them of horrible things, threatened them with death, and then say, well, we're going to kill him unless you give back some people who spied on you, America, for us, which is how they run this little game. So Mark Sweetant, Let's go through how they sentence you to death and how you're dealing. You still don't have an attorney. You still, I guess, have you had any representation? Is anybody from the U.S. able to help you at this point?
00:16:10
Speaker 2: At this point, no. The way their system works is they arrest you first. They put you in this detention camp. The first Americans in there, it's a horrible, horrible place. You don't have running water. You don't have light. You have 24-hour lights. It's Houston-type weather, hot and cold, humid and everything. If you look at the map, they're pretty much lined up. It's a course of measure is what it is. You have a window, two tiny windows that are like 25 feet up, so there's no airflow. And then you have the ceilings that are kind of open where it's raining through. We don't have running water. We don't have hot water. We don't have AC or heat. There's no beds. You sleep on it. Concrete, they call it a bed, but it's just a raised concrete platform. You're sleeping on the concrete. You don't have a toilet. You have a hole in the floor. You have 32 guys in basically about, I'd say about 30 feet or less by about 10 feet. You've got communist propaganda playing all day. And you've got forced slave labor for American companies, even putting on the American price tags. Big business. I can name the products. I actually got some of the products out to my mom, and an attorney tried to contact them. Of course, it was no comment, but I can prove what I said. I'd take a lie detector on national TV any day to do it. So you've got this big forced slave labor in there. What they do is they question you every day for 37 days and decide to arrest you or not. You've got like a 99% arrest rate there. 99.9 conviction rates. So they question you, they pull you out at 8 in the morning, they keep you there until 5, 6 p.m., and they just want, basically what they want is they want a confession. The U.S. consulate came about two days after, two or three days maybe, maybe four, I don't remember, and the time kind of just blurred at that point. The first gentleman who came, I don't know if we want to name names or not, He told me, his name was Chris Romans, and I'm working on getting my Freedom of Information Act, and I'd love to share it with you, Michael, and the world. He told me, oh, this is a serious crime. You've been accused of, they said you were carrying 62 kilos of methamphetamine. There was nothing on me. There was nothing in my room. In fact, in the end, we found out there was nothing on any of those guys. There was only two Chinese guys that were eight hours away, which I had no contact with anybody, never had anybody's phone numbers. My passport, what it comes down to is, this guy tells me, oh, this is punishable by death. They don't kill Americans here. He said, oh, yes, they do. And this and that. He was very unhelpful. I tried to give him my mom my email logins and this and that so she could get help. He wouldn't do it. As soon as he started to write something down about 10 Chinese police around, the guy just didn't have the balls to stand up to him. A few days later, the consulate chief, Steve F. Bolt, horrible person, comes in and tells me, why don't you just confess? You know you did it. I asked him if he was a communist. if he was red or red, white, and blue. And he was getting real pissy. I said, why don't you do your dance job, go get my passport from them, it's U.S. government property, and prove to them all of this is impossible. I was never in this country. He says, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. That was the end of our conversation there. So if you're asking about there's no legal help, he could have solved this problem because it's before the arrest, which takes place 37 days later. He doesn't do anything. They come once a month after that. So during this time, the Chinese police are trying to pull me out for confession literally every day for 90, 80, 90 days. And they tell me, oh, you're not going to confess. We'll see after seven days of, okay, no food for you, which, by the way, you'd be happy with no food there for seven days. I said, okay. I said, okay, that's the game you want to play. And they shouted at me, we don't serve hamburgers. I said, that food's unedible to me. I said, I wouldn't give that to my dog. And they said, we don't serve McDonald's and KFC like American prisons do. And I'm like, okay. I said, well.
00:21:08
Speaker 1: I didn't know they served that in American prison. That would be an upgrade from what I.
00:21:12
Speaker 2: Understand they served.
00:21:13
Speaker 1: Mark, I don't want to run out of time. Let me ask you, you get a death sentence.
00:21:19
Speaker 2: Right.
00:21:19
Speaker 1: And then they say they're going to suspend that pending review, which I understand is kind of common.
00:21:24
Speaker 2: Well, the death sentence took six and a half years to give me. Right.
00:21:29
Speaker 1: And how did they deliver the news that you had a death sentence?
00:21:32
Speaker 2: Oh, they mark you all in the court. And this all stems down to Canada arresting that CEO for the USA. Yeah. And holding, because I do have a dual nationality. I was just born in the blizzard, literally, across the border from Detroit. So I kept the Canadian a long time ago. I mean, no big deal to be dual.
00:21:56
Speaker 1: And.
00:21:58
Speaker 2: So they'd march everybody in the court. We're talking six and a half years later. What they do is give you a three-month extension. Every three months, they say you're supposed to have your sentence. They extended it 21 times. So it ends up being an extra six years, six and a half years.
00:22:15
Speaker 1: Mark Sweetan is our guest. Mark, I have one more segment, but I have a note and I completely forgot. You have a GoFundMe or some sort of a a community way that people can support you through all of this. Can you tell us where that is?
00:22:30
Speaker 2: It is help.marksweetan.org.
00:22:36
Speaker 1: And that is S-W-I-D-A-N, help.marksweetan.org. We will continue our conversation with Mark Sweetan about this horrible situation that he was caught up in. I hope people will hear this and think twice about whether or not they want to be long-term engaged in business with a country where this can happen to you. I really think it's in America's national interest to bring as much business back to the United States and avoid empowering the Chinese government with our dollars and our trade. Mark Sweetin is our guest tonight. Kirk Cameron of the famous Growing Pains.
00:23:24
Speaker 2: Man, if it weren't for Growing Pains, I wouldn't be on The Michael Berry Show.
00:23:27
Speaker 1: You have a road. The Michael Berry Show.
00:23:29
Speaker 2: Our road.
00:23:30
Speaker 1: We are talking to Mark Sweetan, who's been on a national conversation. He was arrested in November of 2012 on a trip to China to buy building materials. They gave him the death penalty. They suspended that and kept him in prison. where he was until November of 2024 when he was released. Talk me through that timeline of how you find out that you're finally going to be released.
00:23:57
Speaker 2: Oh, well, there's so much in between. I don't know if you want to know about even how the public court works. You know what?
00:24:04
Speaker 1: I've got eight minutes. You tell me, however, I want to get as much out of you before the show's over.
00:24:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, we might have to do a couple more in that 12 years. But, you know, in the first court, when we go to court, They basically ask you, do you want to confess? If not, your sentence is going to be basically 10 times worse. No, I'm not confessing. You don't have evidence. They say, okay, we read the evidence. You have more. You're screwed, basically. So I told them, go ahead and read it. I'm not confessing anything. They had no evidence on me. I basically made a jackass out of them in the court. So the next, it's a five-day court trial. They kick my consulate out of the court, which is illegal. even by their law. They won't let them back in. So we can't take notes. We went to court again to bring more evidence. There's no evidence against me. They kicked my counsel out again. I get sentenced to death. They march you into the court. They sentence you to death. They bring you back to your cell. You immediately will file an appeal. They never gave my appeal in to the court. The appeal comes back. This is when the arrest of the Meng Wanzhou or whatever her name was, CFO, happened. And they arrested a lot of Canadians around the country because of it and gave them all kinds of crazy sentences. Secretary of State Blinken actually had a phone call me in a consulate meeting and asked if I needed to be traded with those two Canadians. Yes, I'm going to be here another five years or I'm going to be dead. I'll tell you one thing. Never once did I actually think I'd be dead. I mean, I've got broken bones. I've got this, that. It's a long story. Numerous. crazy thing that happened there. And needless to say, they don't trade me to trade two Canadians, and I'm a dual citizen. They get home. They get paid millions of dollars. They've stayed six months to a year, and six months in those places, maybe a year in house arrest. I'm in the worst deployable conditions ever. I'm the first American ever sentenced to death in China. I was actually sentenced to death twice, Michael. And then sentenced to a life sentence. After this Even the U.N. ruled it. Unlawfully detained in the U.S. finally did in 2019. I ended up staying until 2024. I was not transferred to a prison until 2023. I'm the longest guy in a detention camp besides bin Laden's bodyguard. This is because over a thousand times of trying to get confessions and evidence, I mean, they never got anything. That American flag shirt you see anywhere in those pictures? That went through court, every court. Oh, wow. That was the one I walked off the plane on. That was me wearing that, and I still got it here. They tried and tried to get me to change out of it, to drag me out of it, and I would not do it. I was defiant the whole time, and it paid off. There's so many men who have come out of China in the last 50 years that are on record. Anything else is not on record, even past that. I'm one of them. We've got about 200 other guys over there. Slave labor, all that is big business. Anybody thinking to do business over there, think again. We created this monster in China, and it's turned against us. Without the big business going there for profit, this wouldn't happen. They'd probably still be in the Stone Age over there.
00:27:37
Speaker 1: And they were until very recently. In fact, If they weren't allowed into the World Trade Organization, that's the moment it all changes for the rest of the world. That's when they become empowered and financed to, in many cases, take over. In many cases, sow discord, do evil things, increase their totalitarian regime at that time, which was beginning. It's awful to see. although the story of China for the 20th century is not a pretty picture for any of it. Mark, are there people in America who deserve credit for helping spring you and get you back home that you have not mentioned?
00:28:17
Speaker 2: You know, Mel Gibson was a very strong advocate of me.
00:28:23
Speaker 1: That does not surprise me.
00:28:25
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I've never got a chance to thank him, so if you listen, thank you, Mel. That was a surprise. Senator Ted Cruz, Congressman Clown, they were on it. There is Roger Carson, Ambassador Roger Carson. They call him Captain America for a reason. He was the head of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs. And we have my mom, who is my hero on this. She's the one who never gave up. When everybody told her to give up, when everybody told her to shut up, she wouldn't shut up. And, you know, being resilient in there is the way to go. And even the special forces and the presidential envoy, when I was on the plane, they said, how did you know to do what you did, to just resist everything, to starve yourself, to cause trouble, to do whatever you had to do in there? Because that's what we're trained for. It just came instinctual.
00:29:23
Speaker 1: All right, let me ask you. I have two minutes left. Let's talk about your return into the free world. I get the sense that has not been easy. This is very disruptive. This is very traumatic. Talk to me about how that has been.
00:29:38
Speaker 2: It's been really rough. My goal is, I mean, I want to get back on my feet. I don't feel as traumatized as people would think, but people think the government cuts you a check. I have POW status, just like a military POW, but I don't have POW benefits. I went from living in Memorial, Houston, and having properties and saving all my money all my life to coming home to zero, everything liquidated, to no credit, to no driver's license, to no identity at all. And trying to start over at 51 when you were doing really good at 37, it's just not possible on your own. I need help. And it's not provided. There's some little assistance here and there from some hostage organizations that are good. And, but you know, there's a lot of money that goes to a lot of places, but it doesn't go to us. We're far and few between the guys who actually return and it doesn't get to us. If it were me and I wanted to do my own organization, which I've thought of it and I've talked to many people, I know I could do better. I know I could, there's, there's too many people. Everybody needs a tax write-off. They could donate the right way instead of donate to a lot of these places. Um, You come back, especially gone as long as I have, and since the death twice and life once, the only person in history around the world this has happened to. After 12 years, everything is gone. My mom is still here. She believed in me all the time. My ex-girlfriend, who is now still back with me, stayed with me and stuck through it the whole time and always believed in me. But even her and I, we have problems right now because it's very hard for me to get on my feet. I want to be married to her. I want to have a house again. I want to build a business again. Maybe I want to do a foundation. I definitely need to take care of my mom, who is handicapped now since I came home. She's on $ 20 a month food stamps the whole time I've been gone. No disability, no SSI, no anything like that. So, I mean, we're really struggling. And when we come back to this economy, I'm sticker shock on a brisket alone in the grocery store. We'll just.
00:31:52
Speaker 1: I can tell you, Mark, that's been relatively recent. I am up against a break. I appreciate you sharing your story. People need to understand there is a cost to trade with China on their terms for so long that a lot of people see up close and it ain't pretty. It is not pretty. There will be a long-term cost to pay. for cheaper consumer goods. And I don't think very many Americans quite realize that just yet. If you like the Michael Berry Show and podcast, please tell one friend. And if you're so inclined, write a nice review of our podcast. Comments, suggestions, questions, and interest in being a corporate sponsor and partner can be communicated directly to the show at our email address, michael at michaelberryshow.com or simply by clicking on our website, michaelberryshow.com. The Michael Berry Show and Podcast is produced by Ramon Robles, the King of Ding. Executive Producer is Chad Nakanishi. Jim Mudd is the Creative Director. Voices, jingles, tomfoolery, and shenanigans are provided by Chance McLean, Director of Research, is Sandy Peterson. Emily Bull is our assistant. Listener and superfan contributions are appreciated and often incorporated into our production. Where possible, we give credit. Where not, we take all the credit for ourselves. God bless the memory of Rush Limbaugh. Long live Elvis. Be a simple man, like Leonard Skinner told you. And God bless America. Finally, If you know a veteran suffering from PTSD, call Camp Hope at 877-717-PTSD and a combat veteran will answer the phone to provide free counseling.
