A Beijing court dismissed charges that a Chinese researcher for the New York Times had illegally leaked state secrets, but sentenced him to three years for fraud, capping weeks of confrontation over citizens' legal rights.
Zhao Yan, 44, had been accused of telling the US newspaper details of rivalry between Chinese President Hu Jintao and his predecessor, Jiang Zemin, over military appointments in 2004.
The paper reported in September that year that Jiang was likely to retire as China's military chief, handing over his sole remaining post to Hu - a forecast that turned out to be true. But in an unexpected turn on Friday, the court said there was "insufficient evidence" for the state secrets charge, which had made Zhao a focus of US human rights pressure on China. "We maintain that Zhao Yan is innocent but I was surprised. He seemed surprised as well," said defence lawyer Guan Anping.
The court did, however, find Zhao guilty of fraud, saying that in 2001 he took 20,000 yuan ($2,500) from a village official on the unfulfilled promise of helping him avoid "labour re-education" - a form of imprisonment. Had Zhao been convicted on the much graver secrets charge, he would have faced 10 years or more in a high-security jail, said Guan.
"The case will stand as a rare example of a (Chinese) court being allowed or instructed to acquit on a charge of the utmost sensitivity", Jerome Cohen, a US expert on Chinese law who advised the New York Times on the case, wrote in an email to Reuters.
Zhao's lawyers said he now had 10 days to decide whether to appeal the sentence. Given the two years he has already spent in detention, the sentence would keep him in jail until September 2007. Guan said there appeared to be no procedure to allow authorities to revive the state secrets charge.
Zhao was adamant he was innocent of fraud and would probably appeal, his sister, Zhao Kun, said. "He's been the most willing to speak up for ordinary people. How could he possibly take their money?" she said.
Zhao Yan, an ex-policeman with the gruff twang of a north-east China native, joined the Beijing bureau of the New York Times in 2004, after working as a investigative journalist for Chinese publications, mixing exposes of corruption and rural suffering with rights advocacy.
In recent weeks, China has clamped down on "rights defenders" - the growing web of lawyers and activists seeking to expand freedoms through litigation and Internet-driven campaigns.
Blind activist Chen Guangcheng was jailed for over four years in the eastern province of Shandong on Thursday. Last week Beijing police detained outspoken human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who has defended the banned Falun Gong spiritual group. A Shandong court said Chen had damaged property and disrupted traffic in a protest. Chen's family and lawyers said the charges were trumped up after he enraged local officials by revealing they had ordered late-term abortions in a population control drive.
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