Chinese prisoners are led to execution by soldiers

CHINA. SEVEN EXECUTED FOR KIDNAPPING-MURDER OF MIGRANT WORKER

July 3, 2006: seven gang members were executed in eastern China for their role in the murders of 17 Chinese workers who had been kidnapped in Cambodia and held for ransom, Xinhua news agency reported. The seven were executed "in recent days" in Jiangsu province for an operation that involved kidnapping Chinese contract workers in Cambodia, holding them for ransom, and then murdering them, reports said.
Twelve of the victims were murdered in Cambodia, while five of them were killed in China. The crimes dated as far back as 1995. In all more than two dozen suspects were convicted, with seven given the death penalty, eight others sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve and seven jailed for life. The other sentences were not specified. The gang was first tried and convicted by a Nanjing city intermediate court in August 2005.
Police in Jiangsu opened the investigation after a local family received a 98,000-yuan (12,200-dollar) ransom note in December 2003, after a relative was kidnapped and then murdered in Cambodia. (Sources: Agence France Presse, 03/07/2006)