Lin Hai, a 30-year-old computer engineer arrested last year, was accused of using the Internet to send 30,000 E-mail addresses to VIP Reference, a dissident publication based in the United States, a Hong Kong-based dissident group said on Wednesday.

Court documents had called VIP Reference a hostile foreign organisation. Lin ran a now closed software company that set up web sites and provide largely symbolic penalty, according to the Information Centre of Human Rights and Demoratic Movement.

A man who declined to give `his name but identified himself as an uncle of the defendant told reporters waiting outside Shanghai Number One Intermediate Court of the two-year jail term.

He said: ``The verdict was scheduled to be handed down today.'' The case, first heard at a closed-door session on December 4, has been ignored by the officialChinese media but it gained widespread attention from abroad, partly because of the explosive growth of the Internet.

China already has more than two million Internet users and the total is expected to surge in coming years. VIP Reference, one of many dissident publications that have sprung up using the Internet, says it sends information to 250,000 E-mail accounts in China from various E-mail addresses in the United States.

Lin's supporters say he frequently exchanged or bought E-mail addresses to build up a database for his online job search.