A SENIOR mainland judge who fled to Hong Kong earlier this year and who has been granted asylum in the United States managed to slip his 12-year-old son out of China before leaving the territory with him this month.
Zhang Xin, 39, a former judge in the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court, flew out of Kai Tak airport to Los Angeles on August 13 after being helped to start a new life in the US by the Yellow Bird underground dissident movement.
When the Sunday Morning Post interviewed Mr Zhang in Wan Chai in May after he slipped into Hong Kong from China, he said one of his major concerns was to try to get his son, Zhang Gong, away from his estranged wife and to join him.
''He has his son with him,'' one of the original Yellow Bird organisers said yesterday.
''I do not know any of the details but they are in Los Angeles.'' The activist said he helped set Mr Zhang up with a ''sponsor'' in the US and with somewhere to live in Los Angeles after he decided that was where he wanted to live.
''He has no friends or relations there,'' the activist said. ''But we asked him where he wanted to go and he said Los Angeles.'' Mr Zhang's troubles began in 1990. He was in the process of seeking a divorce from his wife when he discovered she was having an affair with the chief of the court where he worked.
He said he was put under ''house arrest'' on a number of occasions in a court building after he caught the pair together, causing his boss to lose face.