May 8, 2004, the day Chen Ran married her American sweetheart Michael Rolufs, was a beautiful spring day in the village of Rum, near Innsbruck in the Austrian Alps. Ms Chen's father, Wo Weihan , gave a speech congratulating the newlyweds.
'He said he was happy I was marrying Michael,' said Ms Chen, now 30, a delicate-looking woman whose expression these days is permanently strained. Wo could see the couple were loving and happy. He told Ms Chen she had made a good choice.
It was the last time Ms Chen saw her father a free man.
In April 2005 Ms Chen called the mainland and learned terrifying news: Wo, now 59, a scientist with his own successful biomedical company, had been arrested on suspicion of spying for Taiwan. Ms Chen was
not to see her father again until November 2006, by which time Wo had been sentenced to death.
For human rights advocate John Kamm, Wo's case is a test of the government's push to reduce the use of the death penalty. Since January 1 last year all death penalties have had to be reviewed by the Supreme Court. Last year, the first year of implementation, some 15 per cent of convictions were rejected and returned to lower courts for re-sentencing. Mr Kamm says Wo's conviction is unsound; Wo's lawyer reportedly agrees.
'I believe my father is innocent,' said Ms Chen, who moved to Germany aged 11 with her family, then to Austria two years later. She became an Austrian citizen in 2001. By then her parents had divorced and her father had returned to the mainland to set up the Beijing Wohua Macro-molecular Research Company. 'I don't have any memories that could connect his life to these allegations and crimes. But it's not up to me to determine his innocence; it's up to the court and the justice system to give him a fair trial.'