His wife, who fled with their two children to the United States in 2009, said that she has learned that Gao lost 22.5 kilograms (50 pounds) after being fed only a slice of bread and cabbage each day.
Gao can no longer speak intelligibly after being deprived of any interaction with people and kept in a small cell with little light and no reading material or television, she said.
Such a degree of freedom during Gao’s one-year post-imprisonment “deprivation of political rights” appears unlikely, however.