3 men behind Kunming station killings executed
Print Edition
Three men who led a terrorist attack which killed 31 people at a railway station in Kunming, capital of southwest China’s Yunnan Province, last year were executed yesterday.
Iskandar Ehet, Turgun Tohtunyaz and Hasayn Muhammad were sentenced to death last September after being found guilty of murder and organizing and leading a terrorist organization.
A group armed with knives randomly attacked civilians at the railway station, causing 31 deaths and injuring another 141 people on March 1 last year. Police shot dead four of the attackers, and wounded and captured a female suspect.
The bloodshed in Kunming was blamed on “separatists” from northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, where at least 200 people have died in attacks and clashes between locals and security forces over the past year.
Incidents have grown in scale and sophistication and spread beyond the region, with the Kunming killings the biggest such attack against civilians outside Xinjiang.
The female assailant, Patigul Tohti, who was pregnant when arrested, has been sentenced to life in prison.
Investigators found that the three men had been training recruits for terrorist activities, including the railway station attack, since December 2013.
They were arrested when trying to cross the Chinese border on February 27 in Yunnan’s Shadian township.
China has faced growing threats from terrorism in recent years. Three people were killed and 39 others injured when a sports utility vehicle plowed into crowds near Tian’anmen Square in the heart of Beijing on October 28, 2013.
In a more recent case, 40 rioters were killed in a series of planned bomb attacks in Luntai County in Xinjiang on September 21, 2014.
Six civilians were killed and dozens injured in these attacks.
Chinese courts convicted 712 people for instigating secessionist activities or participating in violent terrorist attacks in 2014, representing a year-on-year increase of 13.3 percent.
China has vowed to step up punishment of “violent terrorists,” and is currently drafting its first anti-terrorism law.
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