BEIJING, Nov 28: China executed Wo Weihan, a businessman accused of spying for Taiwan, on Thursday despite a last-ditch effort by his daughters to appeal for clemency through diplomatic channels.

Wo’s death sentence for passing sensitive information to Taiwan had been upheld in February this year by the Beijing High Court, but had been delayed pending a review. Chinese citizen, Guo Wanjun, was accused and condemned in the same case.

China’s foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters the trial had been fair, and said Wo’s should not be handled differently because he had foreign relatives.

Wo, who ran a medical research company, suffered a stroke in a detention centre in 2005. He was found guilty of discussing the health of senior Chinese leaders, and of sending along information from a magazine. Wo’s daughter Ran Chen was summoned to Beijing this week, for what she was told would be the last meeting with the father she had not seen in four years.

But Chen and her stepmother did not have the heart to deliver their carefully prepared farewells, when they saw that Wo himself had not been informed that they were coming, and did not have any information about his fate.—Reuters