Three more death sentences in Chinaethnic riot trials

CHINA sentenced three more people to death yesterday for murders committed during riots in the far western Xinjiang region in July, bringing to nine the number of people facing execution for the unrest.

Nearly 200 people were killed when Muslim Uighurs and members of China’s dominant Han ethnicity turned on one another in the streets of the regional capital, Urumqi. First, Uighurs assaulted random people in the overwhelmingly Han city. Days later, Han vigilantes retaliated in Uighur neighbourhoods, in the country’s worst communal violence in decades.

The official Xinhua News Agency said three new defendants were sentenced to death by the Urumqi Intermediate People’s Court and three more were sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve – a penalty usually commuted to life in prison.