Beijing - Amnesty International on Saturday said it feared China planned to execute a man convicted of spying for Taiwan and sentenced to death 18 months ago.

A Beijing court this week asked the family of former medical scientist Wo Weihan to apply to visit him within seven days after denying them access for nearly four years, the London-based group said in a statement.

"This sudden move suggests that the Supreme People's Court has approved the death sentence and that the Beijing Municipal Higher People's Court is preparing to execute Wo Weihan," the group said.

Wo, 59, was sentenced to death in May 2007 for spying after a closed trial, losing an appeal in February.

The court verdict said Wo was found guilty of spying for Taiwan "on a number of occasions," such as sending information from scientific magazines and discussing the health of senior Chinese leaders, Amnesty said.

Wo was arrested in January 2005, and prosecutors said he confessed to the charges against him while in detention.

But Wo's family said he confessed in the absence of a lawyer and that he later retracted the confession, it said.

Wo suffered a brain haemorrhage shortly after his arrest and has been held at a prison hospital since then.

China executes more people annually than any other country, but the exact number remains a state secret.

The government has claimed that the number of death sentences declined after the Supreme People's Court began to review all death sentences last year, but it has provided no statistics to back up the claim.

Amnesty said it recorded 470 executions in China last year but it said that figure was "an absolute minimum based on publicly available reports."

The US-based Dui Hua Foundation, a human rights group, has estimated that up to 6,000 people were executed in 2007, based on figures obtained from local officials.

Under new orders issued in March 2007, local courts must prudently use death sentences, safeguard the legal rights of suspects and ensure prisoners have the right to meet their families once a death sentence is confirmed. (dpa)