| |
 |
14 robbers get death
|
MEMBERS of a gang that spread terror in central China for years were sentenced to death on Saturday, as local courts sent scores to the execution grounds in a stern campaign against violent crime.
Gang leader Zhang Jun and 10 accomplices, including four women, were sentenced to death by the No 1 Intermediate Court in the southwestern city of Chongqing for the bloodiest crime spree in modern Chinese history.
Other defendants of the same gang were sentenced at a court in Hunan Province's Changde City. Zhang's trial began a week ago. Four others were given lesser sentences.
CCTV broadcast the Chongqing sentencing live and afternoon newspapers reported it was watched by a large nationwide audience.
Television showed a handcuffed Zhang wearing a black suit flanked by uniformed officers. The defendants stood silent and expressionless before judges and prosecutors in an auditorium-like court house specially laid out and lit for the broadcast.
Zhang's gang is blamed for the murders of 28 people during 22 robberies across central China that netted 5.34 million yuan (US$670,000) and firearms.
The courts had to apply both the current and 1979 versions of the criminal law because the gang shot and robbed their way over a span of almost 10 years, from June 1991 to September 2000.
China proclaimed Zhang public enemy No 1 and mounted a nationwide manhunt for the gang after its most notorious crime -- the botched daylight robbery of an armoured car in Changde on the afternoon of September 1 that left seven dead.
Zhang was caught three weeks later during a rendezvous with a mistress. Police found him carrying a pistol, 180 bullets and an anti-tank grenade.
China has launched an anti-crime campaign, which has seen a battalion of criminals arrested, sentenced and executed around the country.
China Daily said 12 criminals were executed on Friday in Sichuan, Henan and Guangdong provinces. Eight of them were highway bandits who killed more than 11 people and stole goods and vehicles, the paper said.
On the same day, 30 people were executed immediately after being sentenced at a mass rally in Wuhan, capital city of Hubei Province, according to the Legal Daily.(SD-Agencies)
|
|
|
|
