Leading Chinese dissident Yang Jianli gets five years for spying

AFP

BEIJING, (AFP) - China has jailed prominent dissident Yang Jianli, a US resident, for five years on charges of spying and illegal entry, ignoring top-level American and United Nations concern over the case.

Since his arrest in April 2002, the Harvard University research fellow has been one of the most high-profile dissidents in Chinese custody with US Vice President Dick Cheney raising the case during his visit to China last month.

"Yang ... was directed by a Taiwan spy organization in 1991 in San Francisco to collect confidential papers of the Chinese government and he later established his own spy agency with funds from Taiwan to expand his undertakings in China's mainland," Xinhua news agency said, citing the court.

Mo Shaoping, Yang's lawyer, confirmed the sentence, but insisted that the charges were baseless and that the court lacked evidence for the verdict.

"As his lawyer, I believe all the charges are without basis," Mo told AFP. "According to Chinese law he can appeal the sentence, but I don't know if he will."

Yang fled China following the 1989 Tiananmen democracy protests and was blacklisted by the government which refused to renew his passport or issue him travel documents to return to his homeland, in violation of international law.

He tried to secretly sneak into China in April 2002, but was arrested in southwestern Kunming city.

It was unclear Thursday if Chinese authorities would release Yang into exile, as they have done in other high-profile cases that have appeared to be political in nature and have lacked evidence and due process.

Mo, however, refused to detail the specifics of the case as it was classified as pertaining to "state secrets."

"Today's verdict was only an oral verdict, I can tell you more when the official verdict is issued within five days," Mo said.

Mo said Yang appeared in relatively good health at the hearing and insisted that the proceedings were illegal due to the court's failure to rule on the case within the proscribed time limits set by law.

His arrest garnered a huge outpouring of opposition overseas with the US government and Congress clamoring for his release and the United Nations Human Rights Commission expressing concern over lack of due process in the case.

"The non-observance of Mr. Yang Jianli's right to a fair trial is of such gravity as to give his deprivation of liberty an arbitrary character," the UN said in May 2003.

Following the UN opinion Chinese authorities allowed Yang the right to legal counsel after spending a year in police custody incommunicado, said Jared Genser, director of US-based rights group Freedom Now.

"The Chinese government will be hearing a lot from us in the coming days over the lack of justice in China," he told AFP.

Besides Freedom Now, a large swathe of the exiled Chinese dissident community has participated in a noisy campaign for Yang's release.

On April 27, 67 members of the US Congress wrote a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao demanding his release.

"Of course we are not satisfied with this verdict, it was too sudden and they did not tell us in advance that a verdict would be reached today," Yang's brother Yang Jianjun told AFP.

He said he was notified Monday that he could attend a hearing "to introduce new evidence," the first time the court has allowed a family member to see Yang.

"It was the first time that we've seen each other in 18 years," Yang said.

"They wouldn't let us speak to each other, but we had a chance to embrace after they read the sentence ... after we embraced they criticized us for disrupting court order."

--------------------------
Source: "AFP".