32 terror gangs busted in a month
Print Edition
A TOTAL of 32 terror gangs were busted, more than 380 suspects apprehended and 315 people sentenced by the courts in the first month of an anti-terror campaign in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
Police also seized 264 explosive devices, 3.15 tons of explosive materials and 357 knives, Wang Qianrong, deputy head of the region’s public security department, told a news briefing.
Also busted were 21 sites, including training camps, used for qthe spreading of religious extremism. Police confiscated 101 computers, 387 disks and 1,801 books that contained material related to terrorism.
Six police officers died in the line of duty over the past month, Wang said.
Courts in Xinjiang convicted 315 people, involved in 120 cases of terrorist attacks, religious extremism, manufacturing of guns and explosives, spreading of terrorist propaganda, and illegally crossing international borders.
Thirteen people were executed a week ago for organizing, leading and taking part in terrorist groups, murder, arson, theft and the illegal manufacture, storage and transport of explosives in Aksu, Turpan and Hotan prefectures.
On the same day, three people were sentenced to death by the Urumqi Intermediate People’s Court for an attack in Beijing’s Tian’anmen Square in October last year.
The current crackdown was launched on May 23, the day after a bomb attack on a market in Urumqi, the Xinjiang capital, that ended in the deaths of 39 people.
Police said most of the terrorists were incited by religious extremism. They often targeted people at random, never considering their gender, age or ethnic group.
But the violence hasn’t seemed to scare Xinjiang residents.
Their tip-offs led police to 11 terror groups, the arrest of 80 suspects and the seizure of 160 explosive devices.
In one case, a man was making what Xinhua news agency described as a “suspicious purchase” at a grocery store in Aksu on May 29. He drove off when asked to register his name. The police were called, and under questioning it was found he had links to a terror cell and had been trying to make an explosive device. His arrest led to the seizure of three other suspects.
In another case, neighbors became concerned for the welfare of children they had not seen for a month.
When police in Korla City raided a room in a residential complex on June 19, they found two children, a 4-year-old girl and 6-year-old boy, being taught religious extremism in the name of learning the Quran.
A 30-year-old man and 15-year-old girl were in charge of the children, who hadn’t been allowed out since February.
The boy said they weren’t given any food if they couldn’t recite from the Quran and the man would prick their arms and legs with needles and toothpicks, according to the Korla Evening News.
Police found illegal religious literature thrown in the trash.
The man has been detained while the teenage girl was “educated.”
Data from Xinjiang’s public security department shows that 96 percent of terror cases were identified and thwarted at the planning stage.
Local authorities have tightened supervision of sales of second-hand mobile phones, vehicles and computers.
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