A court in China’s restive Xinjiang yesterday sentenced three more people to death for their roles in July ethnic violence, Xinhua news agency reported, raising the total reported condemned to 17.
On Thursday, the court handed out death sentences to five others.
The Intermediate People’s Court of Urumqi also sentenced one person to life in prison, while three defendants were given varying jail terms for the violence that left nearly 200 dead and over 1,600 injured, the agency said.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Last month nine people previously sentenced to death were executed for their roles in the violence, the worst strife in China in decades.
Violence erupted in the streets of Urumqi on July 5, when Uighurs — a Muslim minority that has long complained of Chinese repression — reportedly attacked members of China’s Han ethnic majority.
In subsequent days, mobs of Han roamed the city’s streets seeking revenge.
Xinhua identified those sentenced to death yesterday as Heyrinisa Sawut and Ruzikhari Niyaz — both apparently Uighurs judging from their names — and Li Longfei.
Sawut was convicted of beating one man to death and injuring three others by repeatedly bludgeoning them with a wooden club, Xinhua said, while Niyaz was convicted of killing a taxi driver.
Li Longfei was convicted over the beating deaths of at least two victims, whose names suggested they were Uighurs.
So far 41 people have been tried and sentenced in the unrest.
Of the five sentenced to death on Thursday, Memeteli Islam was accused of killing a police officer by smashing him in the back of the head with a brick.
Mamattursun Elmu and Memeteli Abburakm were accused of attacking a minibus and kicking a man and woman inside until they died. Mamattursun Elmu was also charged with setting fire to a grain distribution center, killing five people.
Helil Sadir was accused of killing a bystander with a beer bottle and kicks to the face, and Kushiman Kurban was found guilty of stabbing a bystander to death.
Rebiya Kadeer, leader of the Germany-based World Uyghur Congress, said in a statement e-mailed to journalists: “The Chinese government has brazenly ignored all standards of due process of law in a campaign to silence and intimidate the Uighur population through executions and mass detentions.”
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
RSS