BEIJING has denied it tried and sentenced a New China News Agency reporter and his wife to stiff prison terms for having allegedly leaked state secrets to a Hongkong newspaper.
But Chinese sources said yesterday another journalist, a reporter for the People's Daily, had been detained for several months for allegedly supplying information to a Taiwan newspaper.
In a report yesterday, Taiwan's mass-circulation United Daily News said Wu Shichen had been sentenced to 15 years in prison by the Beijing People's Intermediary Court for allegedly leaking state secrets to the Express.
The newspaper also said Wu's wife had been sentenced to seven years in jail for complicity.
''There's no such thing,'' a spokesman for the Beijing People's Intermediary Court, which normally handles such matters, said yesterday when asked about the United Daily News report.
The spokesman said no trial, let alone sentencing, had taken place.