Sunday, February 9, 2003

BEIJING (AP) - A U.S.-based Chinese dissident was convicted Monday and sentenced to life in prison on charges of spying and terrorism, ending a bizarre saga that involved allegations of cross-border kidnapping and hostages found tied up in a temple.

Outraged activists rejected the charges against Wang Bingzhang as false and politically motivated.

Wang, 55, was arrested after police said they found him July 3 bound in a temple in a southern province while investigating a kidnapping case. Pro-democracy activists suggest he was abducted in Vietnam by Chinese agents after meeting with Chinese labor activists in the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi.

Wang was convicted of spying for Taiwan between 1982 and 1990 and of setting up a terrorist group, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. It said he ordered an unspecified assassination in 1999 and plotted to blow up China's embassy in Thailand.

The report was the first time the communist government publicly accused Wang of links to specific terrorist acts, but gave no evidence to support the charges and didn't indicate whether any attacks were carried out.

Shuttle investigative board stepping up whirlwind fact-gathering mission

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