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Mark O'Neill

Dissident Wang Dan arrived in Detroit at 9.50 pm yesterday (Hong Kong time) after his surprise release on medical parole just two months before a state visit by US President Bill Clinton.

 Mr Wang is the last of the leaders of the 1989 student pro-democracy uprising to win freedom.

 His parents were summoned on Saturday to the northeast city of Jinzhou, where he was serving an 11-year sentence for subversion, to accompany him for medical tests before his release.

  The three drove through the night, arriving at Beijing international airport at 6 am. Mr Wang boarded Northwest Flight NW88 three hours later, accompanied by an American diplomat. He was taken to the first class cabin and was picked up at Detroit metropolitan airport by a government limousine.

  Xinhua announced the release of Mr Wang, 29, the most eloquent of the student leaders in Tiananmen Square before their protest was crushed, in a brief statement only after his plane had left.

 Chinese judicial authorities allowed him to be released on bail for medical treatment in accordance with the law, Xinhua said. Beijing denies any connection between Mr Wang's case and its relations with Washington.

 'He seemed quite calm,' said his mother, Wang Lingyun, speaking from her Beijing home after seeing off her son. Also at the airport were her husband, daughter and granddaughter. Mrs Wang, who waged a relentless campaign for his release, said he was coughing badly and suffered headaches.

 He is reportedly also suffering from stomach pain, chronic inflammation of the throat and a possible brain tumour.

 Thomas Royer, a physician and chief medical officer at Henry Ford Hospital, where Mr Wang checked in an hour after his plane touched down, said the activist appeared not to be 'acutely ill'.

 Dr Royer said Mr Wang 'was able to get out of the car and walk into the hospital'.

 'We'll be doing the evaluation and making a decision over the next 24 to 48 hours' on how long Mr Wang will stay, Dr Royer said, adding that he was being treated at the White House's request.

  Mr Wang served almost seven years in jail, in two stints. He was released on parole in 1993 but was re-arrested in 1995 for his refusal to stop criticising the Government.

  He is unlikely to be allowed to return to China as long as the present leadership remains in power and will join the fractious exiled Chinese dissident community abroad, mostly in the US.

 The US Government immediately welcomed the release.

 'This is something we have been urging them to do for quite some time, and it is a positive sign,' said White House spokesman Eric Rubin, who is with President Bill Clinton in the Chilean capital, Santiago, for the Summit of the Americas.

  Mr Clinton, who riled Beijing by meeting prominent dissident Wei Jingsheng when he was sent to the US for medical treatment last year, spoke to President Jiang Zemin about releasing Mr Wang during Mr Jiang's presidential visit to the US last year.

 Mr Wei, played down Mr Wang's liberation. 'One cannot say that Wang Dan was freed, because he is not allowed to be free in his country.



Freed Wang Dan reaches US