In a first ever sentencing in a terrorist related case, China executed two Uyghurs for a "terrorist" attack on border police.
In a first ever sentencing in a terrorist related case, China executed two Uyghurs in the restive northwestern Xinjiang region for a "terrorist" attack on border police.
The attack took place before last year's Olympic Games, China's official news agency Xinhua said on Thursday and 17 others were sentenced to jail terms including three who were handed out suspended death sentence.
Mukhtar Setiwaldi and Adbulweli Imin, members of China's predominantly Muslim Uighur minority were executed in the city of Kashgar, the capital of Yarkand in Chinese Turkestan which borders India's Ladakh province where the attack that left 17 dead and another 15 injured took place.
The two were sentenced to death by Kashgar's Intermediate People's Court on November 9, 2007.
Though the Chinese Government releases scant information about an insurgency waging in the province, the attack, the official agency said took place on August 4 last year in remote Xinjiang.
Xinhua had earlier reported that the two ploughed a truck into a group of police officers and then attacked them with explosives.
Authorities announced that three other Uyghurs had been handed two-year suspended death sentence and 14 others were sentenced to jail terms ranging from 10 years to life.
All of them were identified as belonging to East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) which has been listed by Beijing and the UN as a terrorist organisation.
Prosecutors at their trial told the court that the men had engaged in separatist activities from August 2005 until their arrest in January 2007.
According to Xinhua, police during investigations had found that the two had 69 grenades and almost 16 kgs of explosives when they were arrested.
Uyghurs, like Tibetans have a long history of resistance to the Chinese rule and months leading upto the Beijing Olympics large number of cases of violence were reported from the north western Chinese provinces.
China has waged a campaign over the last decade against what it says are violent separatist and Islamic extremist who aim to establish an independent state in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region which shares a border with India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgystan and Tajikistan.
After 9/11 attacks on the US, China had said that Uyghur groups were connected with Al-Qaeda.
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