A Chinese court sentenced two US-based scholars, Gao Zhan (高瞻) and Qin Guangguang (覃光廣), to 10 years in jail yesterday for spying, just days before a fence-mending visit by US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
"Qin Guangguang and Gao Zhan both collected intelligence for spy agencies in Taiwan, causing a serious threat to China's national security," Xinhua quoted the Beijing court as saying.
Sentencing of the pair was announced hours apart yesterday with news of Qin's 10-year term coming late in the day through Xinhua.
Earlier yesterday, Gao's lawyer, Bai Xuebiao, said the court did not order the formal expulsion of the academic -- as it did for US citizen Li Shaomin (
Gao was sentenced after a trial lasting just three hours.
The court sentenced a third person, Qu Wei, to 13 years in jail for providing "national secrets and intelligence" to Gao and Li, Xinhua said.
It gave no description of Qu's background.
Gao's legal team says she gave Li photocopied book and magazine articles about Taiwan and its relations with China.
Her lawyers say Gao knew some were not meant for widespread distribution, but said she had no reason to know they were secret.
Gao's lawyer said he had applied for medical parole for his client, a permanent resident of the US, due to a heart condition.
The government has used medical parole in the past to expel dissidents and a leading Chinese academic said he expected Gao to be put on a plane home very soon.
"I have a feeling that they will expel her within days," said Zhu Feng, professor of international studies at Peking University.
Bai, whose firm worked last year to free another US-based academic suspected of gathering state secrets, said that procedurally the trial was fair.
"She had eight opportunities to speak during the course of the trial and was not interrupted once."
He said Gao also had 10 days from today to appeal but had not decided immediately whether to do so.
Gao was "in very low spirits" after being sentenced, although she received the minimum sentence on charges that could result in execution, Bai said.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Sun Yuxi (
"We have irrefutable evidence that Gao Zhan worked for Taiwan espionage agencies and received funds from them.
Moreover, she openly admitted her crimes," Sun said.
China detained Qin in Beijing last December on suspicion of leaking state secrets, a human rights group has said.
Qin, who works for a US medical group, was chief editor of a now-defunct Chinese economic journal from 1986 to 1989, according to the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.
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