A DISSIDENT abducted from Vietnam by Chinese security agents was jailed for life yesterday for allegedly planning assassinations and bomb attacks inside China.

Dissident groups in the West said that the charges against Wang Bingzhang, a prominent human rights activist, were false and accused China of exploiting the US-led global anti-terrorism campaign to fight internal dissent.

Wang, 55, a Chinese citizen who had lived in the United States for years, went to northern Vietnam last year for talks with labour activists who had crossed the border from China. According to human rights groups, Chinese security services were tipped off about the meeting and arrested Wang and several of his companions inside Vietnam before taking them back. China says that Wang was found tied up at a temple in China during an unspecified kidnapping investigation.

He was convicted of spying for Taiwan between 1982 and 1990 and of setting up a terrorist group, the official Xinhua news agency reported. It said that he had ordered an unspecified assassination in 1999 and plotted to blow up the Chinese Embassy in Thailand. Beijing gave no evidence to support the charges and did not indicate whether any attacks were carried out.

After the verdict, Wang’s parents accused the Chinese authorities of “illegal abduction and illegal interrogation”. They said: “The world is fighting terrorism, but the Chinese Government is making terrorism.”

Wang had lived abroad from 1979, first in Canada and then the US, where he has permanent residence. In the 1980s, he published a prodemocracy journal, China Spring. He slipped back into China in 1998, hoping to organise an opposition party but was arrested and deported.

Timothy Cooper, international director for the Free China Movement, an activist group in Washington, said: “The charges that have been levelled against him . . . are trumped up and have no relation to reality.”

Xinhua said that Wang had used that visit to set up a terrorist group and had told the Taiwanese authorities that he had stockpiled explosives to blow up roads and bridges.

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