China frees activist jailed for spying for Taiwan

BEIJING, Apr 28 (Reuters) A Boston-based Chinese democracy campaigner has been freed after serving five years in a Beijing prison on charges of spying for Taiwan and illegally entering the country, his brother and lawyer said today.

It was not unclear if Chinese authorities would issue Yang Jianli, 44, a passport and allow him to return to the United States, where his wife and children live.

Yang, a permanent US resident, stole into China in 2002 on a friend's Chinese passport. He had lived in exile in Boston because of his involvement in the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests.

He hopes to sweep his father's tomb in their home province of Shandong, the brother said by telephone. Their father died in 2005 aged 92 after returning to China from the United States to plead the authorities to free his dissident son.

Yang himself was healthy, the brother said.

''But he cannot speak to the press because he has been deprived of his political rights for one year,'' lawyer Mo Shaoping said.

Chinese authorities had offered to release Yang on parole and deport him to the United States last year, but he refused insisting that he be allowed to pay respects to his father, the brother said.

It was also unclear if Chinese authorities would allow Yang back into the country if he left for the United States.

His case has drawn fire from the US Senate and House of Representatives.

Yang had been held in solitary confinement after he protested against authorities depriving him of his right to communicate with his family and meet his lawyer privately.

REUTERS SM KN1752