Beijing  — A Chinese court spared the life Wednesday of a Tibetan monk convicted in a series of fatal bombings, commuting his death sentence to life in prison, the government said, in a case that prompted an international outcry.

Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche, 54, was convicted in December 2002 and given a death sentence with a two-year reprieve, which expired Wednesday. The official Xinhua News Agency said a court in the southwestern province of Sichuan commuted the sentence because he obeyed unspecified legal conditions during the reprieve.

The monk and his 28-year-old aide, Lobsang Dhondup, were convicted in 2003 of seeking independence for Tibet. They were charged in connection with a series of bombings in 2001-02 that killed one person in Sichuan, which abuts Tibet and has a large ethnic Tibetan population.

The monk's conviction prompted protests by activists who said he was targeted because of his status as a community leader. A group of United Nations human-rights experts said he received an unfair trial and was mistreated in detention.

The top U.S. human-rights official, Assistant Secretary of State Lorne Craner, expressed concern about the cases during a visit to Beijing in December, 2002.

Chinese authorities say the monk and Lobsang Dhondup confessed to the bombings. Lobsang Dhondup was executed in January, 2003.

The Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader, and foreign activists called on China to spare his life.

Tenzin Deleg Rinpoche suffers from high blood pressure and heart disease, but Xinhua said in an earlier reports that he receives medical care in prison.

In a report issued last April, UN experts cited “serious procedural flaws” in the proceedings against him, including the violation of rights to a public trial, to choose his own lawyer and to examine evidence presented against him in court.

Communist troops marched into Tibet in 1950. Beijing, which says Tibet has been part of China for centuries, has spent decades trying to suppress pro-independence sentiment.