NYT researcher Zhao Yan to be freed this weekend on completing sentence

Chinese journalist Zhao Yan may be released on September 15 when he completes a three-year prison sentence for alleged fraud. Despite the many appeals for his release in the past, his sentence was never reduced and he was never granted early release.

“After serving his three-year sentence in full, first in a state security centre and then a prison, Zhao should have all his rights restored, including the right to work as a journalist,” Reporters sans Frontières (RSF) said. “The government showed no clemency towards Zhao, who was a scapegoat in an affair of state in which he was not involved.” RSF says 35 journalists and 51 cyberdissidents are in prison in China just for exercising their right to inform.

NOT GUILTY AS CHARGED: This undated photo released by the New York Times shows Zhao Yan, a Chinese researcher for the New York Times. Zhao Yan, 44, who has been detained since 2004 was cleared of charges of revealing state secrets Friday August 25, 2006 but convicted of fraud and sentenced to three years in prison. (AP Photo/Courtesy of The New York Times)

Zhao’s family has confirmed that he is due to be released on September 15 in Beijing. A researcher for the New York Times, he was arrested by State Security Department officials in a Shanghai restaurant on September 17, 2004.

He was formally placed under arrest on October 20, 2004 on a charge of divulging state secrets, because he allegedly told the New York Times, well before it was officially announced, that former President Jiang Zemin was about to stand down from his last political post of influence. The New York Times has consistently made clear that it did not get this information from Zhao.

In the end, he was cleared of transmitting state secrets and was convicted of fraud on the basis of the testimony of a Jilin province official and his relatives. The defence was never granted the right to cross-examine the prosecution witnesses, and the authorities refused Zhao’s request that he and the witnesses should undergo lie-detector tests.

Awarded the 2005 RSF - Fondation de France prize for “his commitment to freedom of information,” Zhao was held incommunicado for more than a year in a state security detention centre in Beijing, where he lost 10 kg and was refused some of the medical treatment he needed.

Zhao used to be a reporter for the magazine Reform in China, for which he covered the situation of China’s peasants.