12-year sentence for China dissident on state secrets charge

BEIJING — Chinese dissident Huang Qi has been sentenced to 12 years in prison on the charge of leaking secrets to a foreign entity, more than two years after his arrest.

Huang, who founded a website documenting official rights abuses, has been jailed twice before, including in 2008 after advocating for parents whose children were killed in a massive earthquake in the southwestern province of Sichuan.

Thousands of students died when their shoddily built schools collapsed, but the government has never made public the results of any investigation or held anyone accountable.

A brief announcement Monday on the website of the Mianyang Municipal People's Intermediate Court in Huang's native Sichuan province gave no details on the nature of the secrets the 56-year-old Huang allegedly leaked or who the recipients were.