Beijing, China - Nearly two dozen plainclothes police swarmed the apartment on a December afternoon, confiscating laptops, cell phones, bank cards and books.
The wife, who was bathing her 6-week-old daughter, heard nothing. The husband, China's brashest dissident, was quietly whisked away.
In a matter of minutes, Hu Jia had vanished into the country's state security system.
The Dec. 27 raid sent a clear message that the Chinese leadership is determined to silence critics ahead of this summer's Beijing Olympics.
Although not a household name in China or abroad, the 34-year-old Hu exercised an outsize influence from his airy, fourth-floor apartment, even while under house arrest. Using the telephone and the Internet, he tirelessly detailed the arrests, harassment and detention of other activists to a network of dissidents, reporters and diplomats in China.
When he was taken away, he had been confined to his home for 223 days.
Now Hu faces a charge of "inciting subversion of state power" _ a nebulous accusation often used to imprison dissidents for years.
"It's an obvious signal to activists and other vocal citizens that the same could happen to them if they don't shut up," said Teng Biao, Hu's friend and fellow rights advocate.
The arrest dealt a blow to a fledgling grassroots civil rights movement in China. It also suggests that the government is willing to weather international criticism rather than let protesters mar the Aug. 8-24 Olympics, even as the games put its human rights policies under increased scrutiny. The European Parliament passed a resolution demanding Hu's release, and the U.S. raised his case with Chinese officials.
Why authorities decided to take him away remains unclear. One factor may have been his participation via Webcam in a Nov. 26 European Parliament hearing, when he reportedly said it was "ironic that one of the people in charge of organizing the Olympic Games is the head of the Bureau of Public Security, which is responsible for so many human rights violations."
His wife, Zeng Jinyan, is still under surveillance, with no telephone or Internet access. Their apartment, in a residential complex on Beijing's outskirts named Freedom City, has been cordoned off by police. Security agents turn away reporters as well as visitors carrying milk powder for the baby and other gifts.
The Beijing police and its homeland security department that watches dissidents refused to take questions over the telephone on Hu's case and did not respond to a faxed request for information. A Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said the case was being handled according to the law.
In becoming an activist, Hu chose a path typical for many dissidents. He started out working on specific issues _ in his case, the environment and AIDS. But because the government gave little ground, Hu began to see China's problems as rooted in authorities' lack of respect for human rights.
Tenacious, resourceful and possessed of a wry sense of humor, he used a handheld video recorder to capture the mundane routine of surveillance from his apartment: security agents eating boxed lunches, napping on lawn chairs and playing cards. They crowded around Zeng as she tried to walk out of the compound and followed her in unmarked cars when she drove off in her metallic orange compact.
"They are just like a pair of friends who faithfully follow us," Hu deadpans in a voiceover.
Hu and Zeng turned the video into a half-hour documentary called "Prisoners in Freedom City." They were put under house arrest May 18 as they tried to leave for Europe to promote the movie and meet other activists.
"I never compromise with the government," Hu said in a November interview. "I believe there must be someone at the front lines to let the public and the outside world know the truth."
Using the e-mail address "freebornchina," he sent out audio files of his interviews with dissidents.
"I have nothing to lose. The only thing worse is going to prison," Hu said. "If people give me information, I'll send it out with no hesitation. This is what I can do for them."
Bespectacled and slightly built, the 5-foot-5 Hu is a vegetarian and a Buddhist who admires the Dalai Lama, a figure much reviled by Beijing. He sometimes shaves his head, giving him a monk-like appearance, and describes multiple scuffles with police with a stubborn set to his jaw.
"I have cirrhosis because I've been fighting against police in the past five years," Hu said. "The Chinese believe anger harms your liver. There have been too many fights, too much bleeding."
Yuan Weijing, the wife of a blind activist who was imprisoned after he documented forced abortions and other abuses, said Hu had an unhealthy, yellowish complexion when they first met.
Yuan lived with Hu and his wife for a month in Beijing while trying to plead her husband's case. "He is very concerned about the families of civil rights activists," she said. "There is a lot of danger, but he's not concerned at all."
Born in Beijing to parents who were among intellectuals persecuted during an anti-rightist campaign in the 1950s, Hu played the role of protector even as a child.
"When one of his friends was beaten by his parents, Hu Jia would argue with them and say, 'You shouldn't beat my friend,'" his mother Feng Juan, 71, said by telephone. "If he saw beggars or other poor people on the street, he always gave them all his money."
In 1996, Hu graduated from the Beijing School of Economics, where he became interested in environmental issues after reading about an elderly Japanese man who came to China to plant trees in the barren plains of Inner Mongolia.
Hu was moved to do the same thing, staying for a week and using his own money to buy seeds.
His other early efforts focused on the wild elk and Tibetan antelope, which were being killed for fur. He also worked at a Beijing television station as an environment program editor, Feng said.
In 2000, Hu met Wan Yanhai, an AIDS activist pressuring the government to deal more openly with the disease. Hu founded an AIDS awareness group, Loving Source, to help AIDS patients and orphans in Henan province.
The work led to his first arrest. In December 2002, he was detained for four days while trying to deliver toys and winter clothes to Henan's AIDS orphans.
"It was the first time in my life my freedom was restricted, the first time I had been searched, been threatened," Hu said.
AIDS is one area where activists have had some impact, with the government now offering free HIV tests and treatment for the poor.
"All he is doing is fighting for justice," said his mother, who now runs a store with her husband. Both have been warned seven times by security agents not to talk to journalists about Hu's case, she said.
In January 2006, Hu married Zeng, whom he had met while she was doing AIDS volunteer work.
A month later, he was seized by security agents and driven with a hood over his head to an unknown location. He was held for 41 days and questioned about a nationwide hunger strike he helped organize to protest violence against dissidents.
Zeng, a waiflike 24-year-old with a heart condition, became a fierce human rights advocate, using her blog to bring attention to her husband's case. Last year, she was named by Time magazine as one of the world's 100 most influential people.
On Nov. 13, Hu sent a text message announcing the birth of their daughter: "She is our angel." Being a father seemed to deepen his commitment to activism.
"Now that she is in this world, the one thing I can do for her is to push for change in society so that we have more freedom," Hu said. "There are so many children being born in China every day. We need to do this for them."
Six weeks later, he was gone.