Zhao Zan, a researcher in the Beijing bureau of the New York Times, has been held in custody for almost a year, accused of leaking state secrets.

An excerpt:

For the more than 11 months that he has been incarcerated, Zhao Yan has been held in one of the darkest corners of China's legal system because of the accusation against him: that he leaked state secrets to his employer, The New York Times.

The accusation, which Mr. Zhao and The Times deny, deprives a defendant in China of almost all rights. Mr. Zhao still has not had a court hearing. No public explanation has been given for his arrest. He is forbidden to see his family. His lawyer's efforts to post bail were denied not by a judge but by the Ministry of State Security, the agency that arrested him.

Mr. Zhao, 43, who worked as a researcher for the newspaper's bureau in Beijing, was no stranger to State Security when it picked him up last Sept. 17 at a Pizza Hut in Shanghai. His previous work as a muckraking journalist and rural activist earned him regular visits from agents and invited speculation that his past life was the reason for his arrest.

But a confidential State Security report and interviews confirm that Mr. Zhao was the focus of a high-level investigation begun in response to an article in The Times on Sept. 7.

The article, which cited two anonymous sources, stated that Jiang Zemin, the former president and Communist Party chief, had unexpectedly offered to resign his last leadership position, as head of the military - an exclusive report that was proved accurate when Mr. Jiang retired on Sept. 19.

In many other countries, information about the future of a political leader would be considered in the public domain. But even as China's authoritarian leaders now promise a more impartial legal system to their citizens and the multinational corporations that do business here, they continue to use the loosely defined state secrets law to single out political enemies and prevent journalists from prying into the inner workings of the top leadership of the ruling Communist Party.