Another load off the shoulder of Internet giant Yahoo as China finally freed a dissident partly jailed when the company gave out information that led Chinese police officials to Wang Xiaoning.

According to BBC, Mr Wang was handed over to his wife, Yu Ling, by Beijing jail officials on Friday last week.

He served out a 10-year jail term.

In 2002, Beijing detained Mr Wang, an engineer who worked for China's weapon-making industry, and accused him of "incitement to subvert state power," which according to The Associated Press (AP) were the normal charges hurled by the government on suspected counter-revolutionaries.

Mr Wang was singled out by his government for his anonymous e-mail and online campaigns that denounced China's one-party rule.

"Without a multiparty system, free elections and separation of powers, any political reform is fraudulent," was one of the lines that Chinese authorities have attributed to the now 62-year old Web activist, according to AP.

But the manner he had waged his fights greatly contributed to the Chinese police pinpointing Mr Wang, no thanks to Yahoo's Hong Kong division decision to give in to the demands of Beijing and give out information that unmasked the identity of the underground campaigner.

Mr Wang was formally sentence in 2003, sparking an outcry against Yahoo, which then reasoned in an ensuing U.S. Congress probe on the matter that its actions on the matter were wholly influenced by legal obligations while operating within China's borders.

Yahoo, according to Agence France Presse (AFP), also claimed that it was completely unaware that China will use the information it provided on the prosecution of Mr Wang and another dissident, Chinese journalist Shi Tao, who was imprisoned in 2005.

The twin cases were picked up by human rights group World Organization for Human Rights, which pursued a lawsuit against Yahoo in the United States representing Mr Wang, Mr Shi and other jailed political critics of China.

Yahoo opted to settle the case in 2007 and said sorry to families involved in the cases, paying at the same time an undisclosed amount.

Yahoo's overall attitude over the matter raised questions on how far global companies should accommodate requests from oppressive governments, while critics labelled the incidents and the subsequent legal troubles as representatives of the Web company's worst PR nightmare.

For her part, Ms Yu has maintained that her husband was wrongly imprisoned and was persecuted for merely criticising the communist rule of his government, acts that normally would be laughed off in other countries.

In an interview with BBC, she said Mr Wang was in "good health and fine spirits" but will remain out of reach for now.

AFP reported that the newly released China critic was under restriction and has suspended political rights for another two years.

It was unclear though if Mr Wang was under government orders to shun media interviews, especially to international news organisations.