Genser presented a more sinister explanation for the charge.

“We see this as a very sad example of the Chinese government continuing to prosecute someone with whom they disagree,” he said.

But those close to Yang were unsure of how to interpret the arrival of the long-delayed indictment.

“It could be prospectively good news in that it means the Chinese legal process is swiftly coming to a close,” Genser said. “The intense pressure on the Chinese government has clearly caused them to move more swiftly than perhaps they might have liked.”

In addition to the Senate committee’s resolution—which Genser said he thought would come before the full Senate within the week—that pressure included formal condemnations in recent months from the U.N. and the House of Representatives.

Frank echoed Genser’s tentatively positive note, calling the indictment “in a perverse way good news.”

“We were very unhappy that he was being indefinitely held,” he said.

Genser said one major advantage that would normally come with indictment in a case like Yang’s—the privilege to see a lawyer, which is extended to those formally charged with an offense—had already been granted in Mo’s meetings with Yang this month.

“There are no additional benefits beyond the benefits we’ve already seen,” Genser said.

When Yang saw Mo this week, said Fu, the two planned for his defense—and Yang also gave his lawyer a personal message to relay back to Cambridge.

“The lawyer called me at 3 a.m.,” Fu said. “I thought it was something really important.”

Instead, she said, Mo had rung her up with birthday wishes for Yang’s son, who turned eight yesterday.

Genser worried that despite mounting international disapproval of China’s human rights record in cases like Yang’s, the ideal moment for an indictment to be handed down might not yet have arrived.

“From our perspective, this is not the best time for this case to be coming to a close,” he said, citing “ongoing tension” and frustration in high governmental circles. “Right now there’s not a lot of dialogue about human rights going on.”

Jeffrey M. Jamison, a spokesperson for the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, said cases like Yang’s made China’s current human rights record a mixed bag.