China jails U.S. -based dissident for life

Beijing (Reuters): Achinese court sentenced a U.S.-based dissident to life in prison on Monday for "terrorism" and for plotting to bomb China's embassy in Bangkok and to carry out assassinations to disrupt national day celebrations.

The sentence imposed on Wang Bingzhang, 55, was possibly the heaviest for a prodemocracy activist since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown and marked the climax of a bizarre tale involving charges he was kidnapped from Vietnam by Chinese security agents.

International rights groups swiftly protested.

Wang, who has a doctorate in medical research and had lived in New York since 1982, was convicted by the Intermediate People's Court in the southern boom town of Shenzhen after a one-day trial behind closed doors in January.

The official Xinhua news agency said Wang had plotted to bomb the Chinese embassy in the Thai capital during visits in 2001 and had made preparations to build a terrorist training base in northern Thailand.

He ordered someone named Xie Hong to carry out bombings and assassinations to disrupt China's Oct. I National Day celebrations in 1999, Xinhua said. No such incidents were reported that year.

Wang also wrote and published books and posted articles on Web sites, "agitating terrorist activities", Xinhua said.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, China has accused Muslim separatists in the northwestern region of Xinjiang of terrorist acts in their sometimes violent campaign for independence. This was the first time the charge had been used to convict a pro-democracy activist.

Xinhua also said Wang gathered intelligence and passed on military secrets to Taiwan, which supplied him with money between 1982 and 1990.

Court officials reached by telephone declined to comment on the sentence, underlining the sensitivity of the case. Wang's family was stunned. "We never imagined the sentence would be this heavy. We're shocked," his sister, Julie Wang, said by telephone from San Diego.

"There's no justice in this world," the 60-year-old retiree told Reuters. "I've been crying since I learned about it. But I don't dare tell my parents. They're in their 80s and won't be able to live if they hear this news."

In Hong Kong, a dozen human rights activists demanded Wang be freed as they marched on Beijing's representative office. A scuffle broke out when police tried to prevent the protesters from approaching the building.

"China's imposition of such an abusive sentence shames not only China but those nations that do business as usual with China," said the Washington-based Free China Movement, a coalition of more than 30 Chinese pro-democracy organizations.

Wang slipped into China in January 1998 using a false passport to help to establish the China Democracy and Justice Party. He was detained after a nationwide manhunt and expelled the following month to avoid a row with Washington.

Analysts said China was now not worried that Wang's imprisonment would strain ties with the U.S., which is eager to have China on its side in its bid to disarm Iraq and to defuse a crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

It was not immediately clear if Wang would appeal against the sentence after what the Free China Movement called a trial on "trumped up charges that bear no relationship to reality and without the benefit of a genuine legal defense".

Wang's daughter, Wang Qingyan, had sacked two state-appointed lawyers. Xinhua said Wang was represented by two lawyers.