A Chinese-born man was sentenced by a Swedish appeal court Friday for spying on refugees from China's Uighur minority.
The man, who denied the charges, is also a Uighur, a mainly Muslim minority from the western region of Xinjiang that, in recent years, have protested against Han Chinese settlement in their homeland, DPA reported.
The appeal court sentenced him to one year and 10 months in jail, six months longer than a sentence he received from a lower court in March.
Babur Maihesuti, 62, was convicted of illegally gathering information for financial gain. He passed on information about Uighurs in Sweden to the Chinese state from January 2008 until his arrest in June 2009. He also had contact with a diplomat and a journalist, whom the Swedish security police said was an intelligence officer.
According to the prosecutor, the suspect gleaned information by attending meetings and conferences organized by exile groups and pretended to sympathize with their cause.
The Chinese regional capital of Urumqi was rocked by protests in July 2009 that resulted in some 197 deaths and about 1,600 injured in clashes between Uighurs and Han Chinese.
Several alleged protesters have been executed.