Chinese man gets death for leaking ‘top state secrets’

By Mahmut Atanur

BEIJING

A Chinese court has sentenced a man to death for allegedly leaking more than 150,000 materials containing “top state secrets” to unidentified foreign agencies, according to state media Tuesday.

The China Daily reported that Huang Yu, 42, was accused of contacting a foreign spy agency by Internet in 2002 after learning he would be sacked from his job at an encryption research institute in southwest Sichuan province.

It cited China Central Television as saying that Huang’s “espionage” activities started with providing a foreign spy, who he met in an undisclosed Southeast Asian country, with three electronic documents containing “military secrets” in exchange for $10,000.

Before his detention in 2011, he allegedly traveled abroad regularly to meet with the spy, leaking over 150,000 materials -- some of them containing 90 “top State secrets” -- and earning more than $700,000.

The sentencing was reported as China marked its first National Security Education Day on April 15 in a bid to “raise public awareness of national security.”

According to the Daily, Huang’s wife and his brother-in-law also received five-year and three-year sentences, respectively, after being found guilty of “negligent disclosure of State secrets”.

The report listed several other espionage cases in recent years, including a 15-year term handed in 2012 to a man accused of disclosing military secrets to foreign organizations after undergoing “special training” in a Southeast Asian country.

In April last year, veteran Chinese journalist Gao Yu, 72, was handed a seven-year term for “leaking state secrets abroad” -- a charge often leveled against Chinese journalists under which they can face a maximum of 15 years in jail.

The sentence was reduced to five years in November after she admitted guilt at an appeal.