Australian journalist Cheng Lei was formally arrested in China on Feb. 5, six months after she was first placed under detention on suspicion of endangering national security.

Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne confirmed news of the arrest in a statement on Monday, saying that her Chinese counterparts have advised that Cheng Lei was held on suspicion of illegally supplying state secrets overseas.

Embassy staff have visited Cheng six times since she was detained in August, in accordance with Australia’s consular agreement with China, Payne said. The most recent visit took place on Jan. 27.

China confirmed the arrest and urged Australia to respect its judicial sovereignty and stop interfering in the nation’s handling of cases according to the law.

Cheng’s family said that they were “absolutely convinced of her innocence” and were supporting her two young children in every way they could, according to a statement published on Twitter by ABC Australia’s China correspondent Bill Birtles.

The family urged the Chinese authorities to “bring this matter to a swift, compassionate and timely conclusion” while adding that they would not comment further on her arrest and detention at this time out of respect for China’s judicial process.

Cheng’s niece, Louisa Wen, told ABC that she didn’t think Cheng “would have done anything to harm national security in any way intentionally.”

She added: “We don’t know if she’s just been caught up in something that she herself didn’t realize.”

News of Cheng’s detention last year prompted some Australian media outlets to move their correspondents out of China. In December, Cheng’s friend Haze Fan, a staffer at Bloomberg News’ Beijing bureau, was also detained on suspicion of engaging in activities endangering national security.

Cheng was born in China and emigrated to Australia with her family when she was a child. She later returned to China for work and joined the English-language state broadcaster CGTN in 2013. The broadcaster scrubbed her profile page and her previous work from the CGTN website following her detention in August.

Australia has “raised its serious concerns about Ms Cheng’s detention regularly at senior levels, including about her welfare and conditions of detention,” Payne said.

“We expect basic standards of justice, procedural fairness and humane treatment to be met, in accordance with international norms,” she said.

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