BEIJING (AFP) – China executed two Muslim men in its far northwest on Thursday for a "terrorist" attack that was aimed at sabotaging last year's Olympics and left 17 policemen dead, state media reported.
The two members of China's Muslim Uighur minority group were put to death in the famed old Silk Road city of Kashgar, where the attack took place, Xinhua news agency reported.
The August 4 incident was the most serious in a wave of unrest in China's remote Xinjiang region ahead of, and during the Beijing Olympics, leaving dozens of people dead.
China blamed the violence on separatist militants from Xinjiang who were wanting to use the global spotlight of the Olympics to raise awareness for their independence cause.
Xinjiang, a vast area that borders Afghanistan and Pakistan, has about 8.3 million Turkic-speaking Uighurs, many of whom say they have for decades suffered Chinese political and religious persecution.
The men executed -- Abdurahman Azat, 34, and Kurbanjan Hemit, 29 -- were sentenced to death in December after being convicted of carrying out the attack with the intention of trying to "sabotage" the Olympics, Xinhua reported....
Chinese officials previously said the two were carrying documents advocating "holy war" that linked them to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, listed by China and the United Nations as a terrorist organisation....
Now this is how you deal with jihadis. What is our muslim president going to do with members of the same group? He is going to release them into the US.
10 years ago
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