CHINA: DEATH PENALTY UPHELD FOR THREE WHO LED MASS STABBING IN KUNMING

October 31, 2014: A Chinese appeal court has upheld death sentences for three people convicted over a mass stabbing this year in which 31 people were killed, say state media.
“The higher people’s court of Yunnan province rejected Hasayn Muhammad’s appeal and upheld the penalty meted out by the Kunming municipal intermediate people’s court last month,” Xinhua said in a dispatch from Kunming.
The intermediate court in the south-western Chinese city had convicted and sentenced to death Muhammad and two others, Iskandar Ehet and Turgun Tohtunyaz, for “leading a terrorist group” that planned and carried out the attack at the city’s railway station on 1 March. Though Xinhua mentioned only Muhammad’s appeal, it said the court upheld the sentences of the other two men as well.
More than 140 people were injured during the incident in Kunming, in the south-western province of Yunnan; state media called it “China’s 9/11”.
Beijing blamed the mass knifing on “separatists” from the resource-rich far western region of Xinjiang, where at least 200 people have died in attacks and clashes between locals and security forces over the past year. (Sources: The Guardian, 31/10/2014)