Jiang became a well-known national and international figure last year. At that time he revealed in a letter to top leaders, which was also obtained by the international new media, that numerous Beijing hospitals, including the elite No. 301 Military Hospital, where he is a semi-retired senior surgeon, had far more SARS patients than health authorities had admitted at the time.
Discussing the event is taboo in party circles. Officials fear that re-opening that wound of Tiananmen could lead to demands for political reform and threaten current leaders, nearly all of whom owe their positions to the political upheaval that followed the crackdown.
In a letter addressed to the leadership, and obtained by The New York Times and other publications on the eve of the annual legislative session in March, Jiang described his own role treating wounded civilians the night of the crackdown, June 4, 1989. He said that two party elders, including former president Yang Shangkun, now deceased, had later told him that the party would sooner or later need to admit that killing civilians was wrong.
The letter was treated as a political emergency and the surveillance around Jiang was tightened. But it was not until June 1 when, under instructions from Jiang Zemin, the military chief and China's semi-retired top official, Jiang and Hua were intercepted on their way to an appointment and taken into custody, people told about his case said.
The conditions of their internment at a military medical facility were unusually comfortable, the person close the family said. Jiang was given a private room and allowed to watch television and read newspapers. Hua, who is a medical researcher, was allowed to visit her husband regularly. She was released in mid-June.
But people close to the family said they feared that authorities were seeking to build a legal case against Jiang. One possibility was to charge him with subversion and colluding with foreign forces to undermine China's political system. Another was to compile evidence of his links to Taiwan, where Jiang has relatives, and accuse him of spying for China's archrival.
In the end they appear to have failed to compile evidence of a crime, or decided that any charges against him would be regarded as persecuting the man who told the truth about SARS.
It is unclear if authorities will suppress any future political statements by Jiang. But in a letter sent to his wife last week, he said he now intends to tackle another medical emergency that officials have only begun to fully recognize.
"When I get out, the next thing I will direct my energies to is the problem of AIDS," he wrote.
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