Wife says Gao met family members under strict supervision for the first time since he disappeared two years ago
Gao Zhisheng's case is at the heart of disputes between China and the US over human rights. Photograph: Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP
China's best-known human rights lawyer, Gao Zhisheng, has been visited in prison by his family for the first time since he disappeared nearly two years ago, according to his wife.
The treatment of Gao, whose secretive detention has criticism from the UN's human rights body, is one of the thorniest human rights disputes between China and the US.
Senior Obama administration officials have raised it with Beijing, and the US state department has called on China to release Gao immediately and clarify his whereabouts.
Gao's wife, Geng He, who fled to California with the couple's children, told Reuters Gao met his elder brother, Gao Zhiyi, and her father last Saturday at the Shaya county prison, in the far western region of Xinjiang.
His brother told Geng her husband appeared to be paler than usual, but was in good physical condition, she said. But the supervised visit, which lasted around 30 minutes, gave the younger Gao no chance to say where he had been for the past two years or to talk about his treatment in jail.
Geng said: "I said: 'Brother, why didn't you ask him … where was he staying? Where was he all the years before?' [His] elder brother said: 'My main purpose of the trip is to determine whether he is alive or dead. The police will not allow you to ask so many things.'"
The elder Gaodeclined to comment.
Geng said the younger Gao had wept after he asked about his father-in-law's health, and told his elder brother: "As I'm in such a state, I can't take care of all of you, so please take care of yourselves."
A combative rights advocate who tackled many causes opposed by the ruling Communist party, Gao was sentenced in 2006 to three years in jail for "inciting subversion of state power", a charge often used to punish critics of one-party rule.
He was put on probation for five years, formally sparing him from serving the prison sentence, but his family was kept under constant surveillance and he was sporadically taken into custody during that period.
Last December, state media reported that Gao was back in jail, in what was the first official account of his whereabouts in the last year.
Geng, who has not seen her husband since January 2009, said she had hired two lawyers to appeal against his punishment, and they could start the process in May.
Gao was taken from a relative's home in Shaanxi province in northern China in February 2009. He resurfaced briefly, making contact with friends and foreign reporters in April 2010.
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