US resident Wang Bingzhang (王炳章), who is serving life in a Chinese jail, has been exonerated by Thai police of any connection to a plot to bomb the Chinese embassy in Bangkok, a key plank of his conviction. Wang, a Chinese dissident who had lived in the US since the late 1980s, was sentenced in February 2003 by a court in southern China after being convicted of espionage and leading a terrorist group in a half-day trial.
The court justified his conviction on terrorist charges by stating that he went to Thailand twice "to plan the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Thailand" in 2001. Thai police say no evidence was ever found linking him to the case, US-based pressure group Worldrights said.
The group's executive director Timothy Cooper held a meeting with Thai police Major General Suravudh Kradsiri and Colonel Sanya Thongbud who refuted the Chinese claims. Thongbud, who was in charge of investigating the claims and interviewing Wang, said in a written statement they found "no involvement by him or any evidence that he was involved in any terrorist activities against the Chinese embassy."
The court also convicted him of providing intelligence to Taiwan between 1982 and 1990. Wang, who has been a staunch overseas critic of Beijing's communist regime for almost 20 years, was formally arrested by China in 2002 after disappearing six months before. Activists claim he was kidnapped in Vietnam by Chinese agents and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights found in July 2003 that Wang was arrested and imprisoned in a process that violated international laws.
"China's charges are pure fabrications, ruthlessly deployed by China to help convict an innocent man," Cooper said.
His son Times Wang said his father, in his late fifties, recently suffered a second stroke and was plagued by depression. Wang first suffered a stroke last year but his family was not informed for five months.
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