A Chinese activist who was reportedly arrested for sending a politically sensitive email from his Yahoo account has been freed 15 months prior to the completion of his decade-long sentence.
Shi Tao had used his Yahoo email account to send details of a directive ordering journalists to play down the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown and was sentenced to a 10-year jail term for 'illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities'.
According to the Guardian, the US internet giant Yahoo had given the Chinese government access to Shi's email account, facilitating his arrest.
Shi, was released 15 months before the end of his sentence on 23 August, and the reasons for his early release are still unclear.
The report said that Beijing prohibits open discussion of the crackdown, in which People's Liberation Army soldiers opened fire on unarmed pro-democracy protesters, killing hundreds.
Shi's case had raised huge controversy about the conduct of US internet companies abroad and at one hearing in 2007, Yahoo's co-founder Jerry Yang had apologized to Shi's family.
Activists and human rights groups rebuked Yahoo for its complicity in China's suppression of dissenting voices while the company's spokesperson responded that they were simply following local laws, the report added.
