Yahoo reaches settlement in jailed Chinese journalist case

Yahoo has finally reached a settlement with the families of a Chinese journalist and dissident who were jailed after the Internet giant supplied Chinese authorities with personal Internet data that was used to convict them. Internet giant Yahoo has finally reached a settlement in the case of a Chinese journalist and dissent jailed after it supplied private user documentation to the Chinese authorities. Credit: Yahoo.

Internet giant Yahoo has finally reached a settlement in the case of a Chinese journalist and dissent jailed after it supplied private user documentation to the Chinese authorities. Credit: Yahoo. The settlement follows hot on the heels of a vehement grilling handed down to leading Yahoo executives by the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, which last week accused the company of complicity in supplying private documentation to an oppressive Communist regime.According to a report by CNN, while the monetary amount connected to the settlement has not been divulged, the ongoing legal dispute was settled and filed at the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California on Tuesday. The controversial case was filed against Yahoo by Wang Xiaoning, a pro-democracy dissident sentenced to 10 years imprisonment by the Chinese government; his wife Yu Ling; and journalist Shi Tao, who was also sentenced to a decade behind bars for providing human rights groups with a forwarded government prohibition notice related to the reporting of the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protest.Interestingly, CNN reveals that Yu Ling has only recently received court documents detailing the information provided to the Chinese government by Yahoo, even though her husband has already served five years of his sentence.In commenting on the settlement, Rep. Tom Lantos, a California Democrat and chairman of the House committee that lambasted Yahoo CEO Jerry Lang and counsel Michael Callahan, offered that: "It took a tongue-lashing from Congress before these high-tech titans did the right thing and coughed up some concrete assistance for the family of a journalist whom Yahoo had helped send to jail… In my view, today’s settlement is long overdue."An attorney in the case has revealed to CNN that the families wanted the court to find Yahoo culpable in the jailing of the two men, and also wanted the settlement’s terms to include court enforceability and for its terms to be made public. The final settlement reportedly includes none of those conditions.However, the unnamed attorney did say that Yahoo has promised to do all it can to free the men from prison, and that the families are confident the executives will be dragged back before scrutinising committee panels should they fail to make good on that promise.