China has sentenced two US-based scholars and a Chinese national to at least 10 years in prison for spying for Taiwan in a trial just ahead of a visit by the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, lawyers and state press reports said.
Gao Zhan (39) was convicted during the three-hour trial at a Beijing court, Mr Bai Xuebiao, Gao's lawyer, said.
The sociologist from American University in Washington, DC, was detained along with her husband and five-year-old son Andrew in February during a family holiday to China. Her husband and son were released a month later.
Also convicted in the same trial on identical charges and sentenced to 10 years was US permanent resident Qin Guangguang.
Meanwhile, Qu Wei, a Chinese citizen, was convicted and sentenced to 13 years for providing secrets to Gao Zhan and Chinese-born US citizen Li Shaomin, who was tried and convicted on July 14th of spying for Taiwan and ordered deported.
Qin, a US-based pharmacist who previously studied at the University of Michigan and Stanford University, was detained in December and has worked for a Chinese-American joint-venture pharmaceutical company, UMIC. Li, a graduate of Princeton University, is a business professor at the City University of Hong Kong.
Gao suffers from a heart condition and was sent to an emergency room last week. Gao's husband, Mr Xue Donghua, said he would appeal to Mr Powell to intervene.