Updated on
Summary
China sentenced six people to death on Monday over deadly July riots in its restive Xinjiang region, state media reported. The six were convicted of murder and other crimes by a court in the regional capital Urumqi in the first trials over the riots that killed nearly 200 people and left the city riven by ethnic tension. China Central Television (CCTV) said one other defendant was sentenced to life in prison over the unrest, in which members of the Uighur minority went on a rampage in attacks directed at members of China's dominant Han ethnic group. The riots were the worst ethnic violence to hit China in decades, leaving 197 people dead, most of them Han, and more than 1,600 injured, according to the government. Police have detained at least 718 people suspected of crimes related to the unrest, earlier reports said.
