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China urged to stay execution of alleged spy
2008-11-26
BEIJING - The U.S. government and human rights groups urged China Wednesday to halt the execution of a Chinese medical researcher convicted of spying for Taiwan and voiced strong concerns about alleged flaws in the man's trial. Wo Weihan's final appeal was denied in February and his family was informed on Nov. 18 that the Supreme People's Court has approved his execution, Wo's daughter Ran Chen said. Chen said family members were told to arrange to see him as soon as possible, usually a sign that the sentence is about to be carried out. She said a visit had been arranged for Thursday morning at Beijing's Intermediate People's Court, which is responsible for carrying out the execution. The court said Wednesday it did not have any information on Wo's case and the Supreme People's Court did not respond to faxed questions on the case. Chen, an Austrian citizen pursuing graduate studies in Berkeley, California, said her 59-year-old father was convicted mainly on the basis of a confession that he later recanted. She said the scant evidence brought by prosecutors never proved the spying charges. According to a copy of Wo's conviction, his alleged crimes include revealing the health status of an unnamed high ranking Chinese official -- information considered state secret by China. Wo was also convicted of passing on data about missile control systems. Chen said that data had been published in a magazine and was only later classified as secret. Wo was accused of passing the information through a middle man to a group linked to the Taiwanese intelligence agencies. Taiwan and mainland China divided amid civil war in 1949 and Beijing has maintained a threat to invade the island if it declares formal independence, prompting both sides to spy extensively on each other. Trained as a medical researcher, Wo ran a medical equipment supply company on the outskirts of Beijing and frequently traveled abroad. He was detained in January 2005, but not permitted to see a lawyer until a year later. Wo has been held in a prison hospital since March 2005, shortly after suffering a brain hemorrhage. He was sentenced to death by the Beijing court in May 2007 after a closed trial. His appeal was denied on Feb. 29 this year and his sentence automatically forwarded to the supreme court for approval as required by the Chinese legal system. Although courts have been ordered to apply the death penalty for only the most egregious crimes, China remains the world's leading executioner of prisoners, including many convicted for nonviolent crimes. Amnesty International recorded 470 executions last year, calling that figure an absolute minimum based on publicly available reports. "Available information suggests that Wo Weihan did not receive a fair trial according to international standards," Sam Zarifi, Amnesty's Asia Pacific director, said in a statement. Joshua Rosenzweig, research manager for the U.S.-based Dui Hua Foundation, said there was "no justification" for the death penalty in Wo's case, and said serious questions remained about his lack of access to a lawyer and the circumstances of his confession. Rosenzweig said he couldn't recall another capital case in China that had attracted so much international attention. Austrian, European Union and U.S. diplomats have brought diplomatic representations over the case. "I frankly don't know what impact it will have, but this case is definitely unique in this respect," he said. The U.S. Embassy issued a statement saying it was "deeply disturbed" by reports that Wo's execution had been approved. "We have expressed repeatedly and at high levels our serious concern about the lack of transparency and due process regarding Mr. Wo's case," it said. The embassy called Wo's sentence "disproportionately severe" compared to those meted out in similar cases, and complained that he had not received legal counsel until prosecutors had finished their investigation. Ambassador Clark T. Randt Jr. and David Kramer, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, raised Wo's case with Chinese officials recently, the statement said, and had requested a stay of execution to allow for further review. The Foreign Ministry did not immediately reply to queries about China's response to the appeals. Despite such efforts, Chen said she felt there was only "a really, really small hope" that her father's life would be spared. "I want to appeal as a daughter to spare my father because this would destroy a life and destroy a family," she said.
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