China Gives a Sentence of 20 Years for Plotting Terror Attacks
China has sentenced four people to up to 20 years in jail for “plotting terror attacks”, state media said, the latest in a wave of rulings as the government accelerates a crackdown on what it says is violence fueled by Islamist militants.The sentences came as the separate trial of a prominent Muslim academic began in the western region of Xinjiang. Economics professor Ilham Tohti, who has championed the rights of the region’s Muslim Uighur people, has been charged with separatism.
The four sentenced to between 10 and 20 years were found guilty of “participating in terrorist organizations, illegally making explosives, offering funds or harboring suspects”, the Xinhua news agency said late on Wednesday, in a report on their trial in the southwestern province of Yunnan.
“The court said the gang was influenced by religious extremism and made explosives in Beijing and Yunnan, attempting to launch a ‘jihad’,” Xinhua said.
Two members of the group were captured trying to cross China’s border “to join overseas terrorist groups”, the news agency said. It did not say where they were trying to go.
All four defendants, who are Uighur judging by their names, appealed against the rulings, it said.
The decision follows last week’s sentencing of three people to death and one to life in prison for a March attack at the Kunming train station in Yunnan in which 31 people died and 141 were injured.
