Tiananmen date delays freedom for jailed official

Question: When is a released prisoner not really released because the date is inconvenient? Answer: when a former senior Chinese government official's seven-year term for "counter-revolutionary incitement" is due to end days before the sensitive anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre of 4 June 1989.

Yesterday Bao Tong, 63, former secretary to the Politburo Standing Committee, completed his sentence and was taken by police to a well-guarded bungalow outside Peking. He was the only senior official jailed over the pro-democracy protests; his family said he would not be allowed home until after the anniversary.

Mr Bao, previously a close aide of Zhao Ziyang, the party secretary who was toppled in the power struggle at the time of the Tiananmen crackdown, was privy to decision-making at the highest levels of the party and a potential source of information that could damage some of China's present leaders.

He has been denied his "political rights" for a further two years, which forbids him from talking to foreign journalists.