China deports US geologist after years in jail: human rights group
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China-justice/rights/Beijing (dpa) - A Chinese-born American geologist has been released after seven years in a Chinese prison and returned home to Houston, a human rights group said on Saturday.
Xue Feng was released from Beijing No. 2 Prison after serving all but10 months of an eight-year sentence for "illegally procuring statesecrets," a charge that foreign officials, scholars and human rights groups often cite as a political tactic used for silencing government critics.
At the time of his release, Xue was the only American citizen to be serving a sentence in a Chinese prison on charges of endangering state security, according to the Dui Hua Foundation, a US-based human rights group that announced he'd been set free.
President Barack Obama and three American ambassadors all reportedly lobbied for Xue's release, arguing his alleged crimes didn't merit the sentence.
Born in 1965, Xue is a naturalised US citizen with a PhD in geology from the University of Chicago, Dui Hua said in its statement on Saturday.
Xue was formally detained in February 2008 for selling a database onChina's oil industry.
His employer IHS, a US energy and engineering consulting firm, believed the database was a commercially available product, the statement said.
Chinese officials enjoy broad scope including retroactive powers in classifying state secrets, and the oil database was only classified a secret after Xue bought it, Dui Hua alleged on Saturday.
Xue was tried in July 2009 and sentenced one year later on July 7,2010, Dui Hua said. His conviction was upheld in February 2011 and reduced by 10 months for good behaviour in November 2011, Dui Hua said.
