A Chinese prosecutor has thrown out a case against a software specialist for giving a US pro-democracy Internet magazine 30,000 email addresses in China. The prosecutor told police to reinvestigate, according to the Information Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China. But the accused man, Mr Lin Hai, the founder and manager of the Shanghai Zheng Fang Software Company in Shanghai, was still in detention, it said.

Mr Lin (30) had been arrested in April and later charged with "subversion against the state", the Hong Kong-based group said. The Information Centre quoted Mr Lin's wife, Xu Hong, as saying the Shanghai Municipal People's Procuratorate had sent the case back to the police because it lacked evidence. Chinese authorities were not available for comment.

Mr Lin provided the email addresses to a US-based Internet magazine called Da Can Kao, or `Big Reference'. The website is in Chinese.