British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said on Tuesday he had pressed China about the whereabouts of one of the country's best known activist lawyers, Gao Zhisheng, as confusion remained about his fate.

Gao has been missing since he was abducted from a relative's home in February last year. The government has refused to give any information on his health or whereabouts.

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi earlier in the day denied Gao had been tortured. Before his detention Gao said he had been tortured after an earlier arrest.

"Gao Zhisheng has been sentenced on the charge of subverting state power. In accordance with China's judicial system his relevant rights have been safeguarded, there is no such thing as him having been tortured," Yang said.

Gao was sentenced to three years in prison in December 2006 for posting subversive articles online and slandering the government in interviews with overseas media.

But his sentence was suspended for five years, in a rare display of official leniency, meaning he did not have to serve it unless he committed another crime over that period.

Yang did not clarify if Gao had been taken in under this sentence or had faced a second, secret, trial more recently.

Miliband later told reporters he had been offered no further details on Gao's fate.

"There are different concerns about different cases, and the concern about him is about where he is. That's why it's an important question to raise," he said.

"We raise individual cases as well as the generic point. I explained why there was concern in the U.K. and why that was legitimate," Miliband added.

Self-educated, Gao had grown disenchanted with the Chinese system while representing other activist lawyers, Falun Gong practitioners and underground Christians.

China's embassy in Washington said last month that Gao was working in the western city of Urumqi, a U.S.-based rights group said, but that claim has not been repeated by officials in Beijing.

At the time of Gao's disappearance, his wife and children had already escaped from their home, ultimately arriving in Bangkok where they applied for asylum to the United States.

Reuters