Death Penalty News

A Bangkok court convicted Yusufu Mieraili and Bilal Mohammed of premeditated and attempted murder for their role in planting a bomb at the popular Erawan Shrine in the capital's commercial heart. The blast tore apart the site where worshippers and tourists had gathered, wounding more than 100 people and leaving the shrine to the Thai representation of Brahma littered with motorbike fragments and singed debris.

China executed three people on Tuesday for a mass stabbing in Kunming that killed 31 people last year, the country's top court said, with authorities blaming the attack on separatists from mainly Muslim Xinjiang.  Iskandar Ehet, Turgun Tohtunyaz and Hasayn Muhammad were put to death for "leading a terrorist organisation and intentional homicide", the Supreme People's Court said in a microblog post. 

Two Uighur ex-government officials in China's Xinjiang have been handed death sentences for carrying out "separatist activities", a court said, as Beijing comes under increasing fire for its actions towards minority groups in the region. Shirzat Bawudun, a former head of the Xinjiang department of justice has been sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve on the charge of "splitting the country", according to a statement released Tuesday on the Xinjiang government website. Bawudun had conspired with a terrorist organisation, taken bribes, and carried out separatist activities, Wang Langtao, vice president of the Xinjiang Higher People's Court, said at a press conference. Bawudun was found guilty of colluding with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) -- listed as a "terrorist" group by the United Nations -- after meeting a key member of the group in 2003, according to state news agency Xinhua. The US removed the group from its list of terror...

Click here to Google translate this story into your own language. Plus de 400 études chinoises auraient utilisé les données de transplantations d'organes prélevés sur des condamnés à mort. Un sérieux problème d'éthique pour les revues à comité de lecture et les instances scientifiques. Des dizaines de milliers d'organes prélevés sans consentement alimentent un vaste marché de la transplantation en Chine. L'horreur est connue depuis plus de dix ans. Ce qu'on savait moins, c'est que les prélèvements effectués qui - de fait - condamnent à mort les détenus, ainsi que les greffes qui s'en suivent, sont utilisés pour fournir la recherche en données médicales... pour les publier dans les plus grandes revues scientifiques anglo-saxonnes.  Plus de 400 études nourrissant la recherche sur la transplantation d'organes et le développement de médicaments anti-rejets seraient concernées. C'est ce que révèle une équipe australienne de médecins, philoso...

Chinese death-row inmates are marched to a nearby execution ground where they will be put to death with a shot in the back of the head. BEIJING — When Jia Jinglong, a villager in northern China , was executed late last year for killing an official he blamed for the demolition of his home, the news media boiled with debate about the death sentence. Mr. Jia’s family and lawyers argued that the official had victimized him and that his life should have been spared. “The verdict against my brother was unfair,” Mr. Jia’s sister, Jia Jingyuan, said in an interview this week. “There’s a gap between the standards written in the laws and how those standards are enforced.” A report released by Amnesty International on Tuesday suggests that such complaints of injustice are far from isolated but often remain muffled by official secrecy. That secrecy has undermined the Chinese government’s vows to limit death sentences, distorting how common executions are in China, the report said....

Execution in China: At 9:45 a.m. on the site for public trial, He Xiuling cried again. Among the two dozens of inmates to be executed that day, she was the only one that shed tears. She was also the youngest. Read more. BEIJING — The convictions of a prominent defense attorney and his associates were among the country’s top legal achievements last year, China’s chief justice said Sunday, highlighting a case that has been criticized by Western governments and rights groups. In a report to the national legislature, Zhou Qiang also said that China, which is believed to execute more people than the rest of the world combined, gave the death penalty “to an extremely small number of criminals for extremely serious offenses” in the past 10 years. The actual number of executions in China is a state secret. A 2007 decision that all death sentences must be reviewed by the Supreme People’s Court is believed to have reduced the number of executions dramatically. Zhou praised cou...

In a single year, it executed more people than the rest of the world combined. But exactly how many death row prisoners have been killed in China remains top secret. Amnesty International estimates at least 1000 people were executed by the Asian powerhouse in 2014 alone. In its Death Penalty 2014 report, the human rights group said it actually believed the real number of people being put to death in China each year was in the "thousands", conceding the true figure was impossible to determine. And with more than 50 offences punishable by death and a startling 99 per cent conviction rate, it is perhaps the one country in the world where you don't want to be accused of committing a crime. At least one Australian resident, New Zealand-born Peter Gardiner, is facing the prospect of a Chinese firing squad after being accused of smuggling ice into the country with his girfriend, Sydney woman Kalynda Davis, who has since been returned to Australia. The ...

Six people have been sentenced to death for an attack on a market in China's western Xinjiang province that killed 39 people in May. Attackers drove two cars into shoppers and threw bombs in the Urumqi attack. At the same hearing, two people were given the death penalty for an attack at a railway station in April. The violence prompted Beijing to launch a year-long crackdown on it says is separatist terrorism in Xinjiang, home to the Muslim Uighur minority. Some 200 people have died in clashes, dozens have been sentenced to death and many more jailed since the crackdown was announced. The exiled World Uyghur Congress has blamed the violence on the central government's policies, which the group says repress the local culture. Information about incidents in the region, where ethnic tensions between Uighurs and Han Chinese continue, is tightly controlled. Source: BBC News , December 8, 2014

BEIJING, Oct. 13 -- A court in Xinjiang's Kashgar on Monday sentenced 12 people to death for organizing terrorist attacks that killed 37 civilians in Shache County in July. The Intermediate People's Court of Kashgar Prefecture also sentenced 15 others to death with a two-year reprieve, according to the official news portal of the government of northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, www.ts.cn. Nine people received life in prison while another 20 defendants got four to 20 years behind bars. In addition, two defendants got probation. Source: Xinhua, October 13, 2014

A court in China's far west has sentenced to death 2 teenagers for the killing of the head of the country's biggest mosque, state media reported, in a case that highlighted divisions in the violence-wracked Xinjiang region. The Kashgar Intermediate People's Court on Sunday handed down the death penalty to Gheni Hasan and Nurmemet Abidilimit "on charges of forming and leading terrorist groups and murder", the official Xinhua news agency said. A 3rd person, Atawulla Tursun, received a life sentence for "taking part in terrorist groups and murder", Xinhua said. "The court said the gang, led by Gheni Hasan, was influenced by religious extremism and trained its members to murder patriotic religious figures," the report said. The state-run China Daily newspaper on Monday gave Abidilimit's age as 19 and Hasan's as 18, though it identified Hasan as Aini Aishan, a Chinese transliteration. Jume Tahir, the government-appoint...

China has executed eight militants from the restive Xinjiang province for "terrorist attacks," including three who masterminded a suicide attack in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 2013, killing three people and wounding 39 others. The executions took place after Supreme People's Court upheld their death sentence. The crimes involved five cases including the terrorist attack at the iconic Forbidden City in the Tiananmen Square in Beijing, seizing of guns from police in Aksu, illegal manufacturing of explosives and murder of civilian in Kashgar,and the establishment of terrorist organisation, murder of government officials and incineration of checkpoint in Hotan. The news of the executions were released by the official media late last night and television showed all of them facing trial. Xinjiang, where the native Uygur Muslims were restive over the increasing settlements of Hans from other provinces facedincreasing attacks stated to have been organise...

The United States has called on China to release Uighur rights activist and economics professor Ilham Tohti, who was charged Wednesday with separatism two days after clashes in Xinjiang that caused dozens of casualties. The head of a U.S./based Uighur group said the Muslim Uighur community is rising up against China’s recently-announced crackdown. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf Wednesday expressed concern about Ilham Tohti’s indictment, as well as his detention and that of six students since January: "We have been deeply concerned about the lack of transparency concerning his welfare and access to legal representation. We call on Chinese authorities to release Mr. Tohti and his students and to guarantee them the protections and freedoms to which they are entitled under China’s international human rights commitments, including freedom of expression," said Harf. Charged with separatism China’s state-run Global Times newspaper said the former ...

June 16, 2014: Three people were sentenced to death for their roles in carrying out a deadly attack on Tiananmen Square last October. The Xinjiang Intermediate People's Court also handed a life sentence to one suspect, among eight put on trial for allegedly planning the attack. Four of those received sentences ranging from five to 20 years in jail, state television said on its official microblog. The trial started on June 13, and the sentence came out today, said CCTV. It identified two of the accused with names that sounded Uygur, the largest ethnic group in the violence-racked region of Xinjiang. Two people were killed and 40 injured when a car ploughed into a crowd at the northern edge of Tiananmen, while the three people in the car also died. The government had blamed Islamic militants for the attack on October 28. Sources: Reuters, June 16, 2014

URUMQI, June 16 (Xinhua) -- Thirteen people were executed on Monday for terrorist attacks and violent crimes in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. They were involved in seven cases and convicted of organizing, leading and participating in terrorist groups; murder; arson; theft; and illegal manufacture, storage and transportation of explosives, according to local courts in prefectures of Aksu, Turpan and Hotan. All death penalties have been approved by the Supreme People's Court, as required in China. The 13 planned attacks and killed police officers, government officials and civilians. They took innocent lives, caused huge property losses, and seriously endangered public security, according to local courts. In one case, three defendants -- Ehmetniyaz Sidiq, Abdulla Srepli and Gulam Eli-- were convicted of organizing and leading terrorist attacks on a police station, hotel, government office building and other venues, killing 24 police officer...

May 27, 2014: Chinese authorities used a public rally in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region to sentence 55 people on charges including terrorism. At least three people were sentenced to death. Others were jailed for murder, separatism, and organizing or participating in terror groups. The official Xinhua news agency said 7,000 locals and officials witnessed the mass sentencing at a stadium in northern Xinjiang's Yili prefecture. At the event, Yili Deputy Communist Party Chief Li Minghui said the rally demonstrated a "resolute determination" to crack down on what China calls the three evils of terrorism, separatism and extremism. Beijing announced a year-long security crackdown following an attack that killed 43 people and wounded more than 90 in the regional capital, Urumqi, on 23 May 2014. Following the Urumqi attack, China said it broke up 23 terrorist gangs and arrested more than 200 people in three areas of southern Xinjiang.  Source: VOA...

Men from Uighur ethnic minority convicted over deaths of 15 members of security forces in restive Muslim region of China Two men have been sentenced to death and three others to prison terms over deadly attacks in the traditionally Muslim region of Xinjiang, Chinese state media has reported. The violence on 23 April was one of a series of incidents between authorities and members of the region's native Turkic Uighur ethnic minority. The Xinhua News Agency and other outlets said Musa Hesen, the alleged leader of an extremist group, sentenced to death following a one-day trial on Monday for murder, forming and leading a terrorist organisation and illegally manufacturing explosives. Another defendant, Rehman Hupur, received the death sentence for murder and belonging to a terrorist organisation. The sentences imposed on the three others ranged from nine years to life in prison. The reports said the defendants did not contest the charges and had lawyers present d...

BEIJING: China sentenced three men to death and another to life in prison on Tuesday over an alleged hijacking attempt in June by members of the minority Uighur ethnic group in the restive northwestern region of Xinjiang. Charges against the men included organising, leading, and taking part in a terrorist organisation, and using explosives, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing the Intermediate People's Court in the city of Hotan where the incident occurred. It said the four confessed and did not contest the charges. In total, six men from the Muslim Uighur ethnic group were arrested for the alleged attempt on June 29, two of whom later died from injuries sustained while fighting the crew and passengers. An overseas rights group says the incident was a brawl over a seat dispute a relatively common occurrence in China not a hijacking attempt. A court official directed questions to the Xinjiang government, where a man who answered the phone and identified himsel...

The Chinese government is tightening adoption rules to combat child trafficking, state media reported Tuesday, a day after 8 people convicted of abducting or murdering children received sentences including the death penalty. Only orphanages will be able to offer abandoned infants and children for adoption, and adults who adopt without official registration will not be recognized as legal guardians, the China Daily reported. China has a thriving domestic black market in children, mostly involving buyers who want more children or those who want them as slave labor. Forcing people to go through official adoption channels will reduce the demand for abducted children, Ji Gang, the director of the domestic adoption department of the China Center for Children’s Welfare and Adoption, was quoted as saying by the China Daily. The rules being drawn up are due to be introduced by the end of the year. Authorities in northwestern China announced earlier in the year they would crack down on the t...

March 23, 2011: Seven people allegedly involved in plotting terrorist activities have been sentenced to death for robbery and murder in China's far western region of Xinjiang, a state-run news website said. China's Supreme People's Court recently approved the death penalty meted out to seven people by a court in the Silk Road city of Kashgar in Xinjiang's west, the Tianshan website said. It was unclear whether the seven are Uighurs, historically Xinjiang's majority ethnic group, many of whom resent heavy-handed Chinese rule. The report says the seven sentenced to death are among a dozen people who met and raised funds between June 2008 and October 2010 to carry out "violent, terrorist" activities. It did not elaborate. The robberies and murders were committed on three occasions last year, the report said. On Aug. 7, Aimaiti Tuheti and Yiming Dawuti and others killed a security guard at a pedestrian mall while trying to steal, it said. On Oct. 12, Nuerm...