Three railroad station attack suspects sentenced to death by Chinese court.
On Friday, a Chinese court found four people guilty of carrying out a massive slaying rampage at a railroad station back in early March, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported. Three people were sentenced to death and one more was sentenced to life in prison.
The three men given death sentences were convicted on terrorism charges including leading and organizing a terrorist organization, The New York Times reported. They were captured before the attack, but they were charged because of their affiliations with the other five members of the group who carried out the actual attack.
Four members were shot by the police at the site of the crime and the fifth one, a woman, was shot and then captured. She was sentenced with life in prison, not death, because she was pregnant when she was arrested. The attack, one of the most brutal slaying rampages in Chinese history, left 31 people dead and 141 wounded. The attack took place at the Kunming railroad station where the attackers used daggers and long knives to stab people. The majority of the victims belonged to the Chinese ethnic majority, Han. It is believed that this was one of the reasons why the railroad station was targeted. The attackers, Iskandar Ehet, Turgut Tohtunyaz and Hasayn Muhammad are from the Xinjiang region of China. Even though Xinhua didn't disclose their ethnicity, their names suggest that they are probably of Uighur heritage, the Times said. Uighurs are Chinese minority of Turkic ancestry who practice Sunni Islam. There has been growing tension between the members of the minority community and the dominant Han Chinese.
Uighurs have been complaining about the increasing government control over their religion, traditional practices and their language. The tension between Uighurs and the Chinese government has been exacerbated by the growing Han presence in the once-majority Uighur region of Xinjiang.
