The Intermediate People’s Court in Hotan Prefecture ruled at the first instance that the men were guilty of organizing, leading or participating in a terrorist group, hijacking the aircraft and attempting to detonate explosives on the aircraft.

Musa Yvsup and Arxidikali Yimin, the leaders of the group who plotted the hijacking, and Eyumer Yimin, a major participant in the planning, were sentenced to death, according to a statement from the court.

Alem Musa, who played a minor role in the plane hijacking and willingly pleaded guilty after being arrested, received a life sentence, said the statement.

All the defendants confessed the above crimes at the court.

Tensions in Xinjiang Autonomous Region have been mounting since 2009. According to AFP, the attempted hijacking also resulted in an ‘economic loss’:

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Post tags: hijack, terrorism, World Uyghur Congress, Xinjiang
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A Chinese court on Tuesday sentenced Naw Kham, a drug lord from Myanmar, and three of his subordinates to death for the murder of 13 Chinese sailors on the Mekong River last year.

The six suspects, comprised of five people from Myanmar, Thailand and Laos and one stateless suspect, faced charges of intentional homicide, drug trafficking, kidnapping and hijacking or a combination of those criminal offenses. The suspects were ordered by the court to pay compensations totalling six million yuan (about 960,000 U.S. dollars).

All six defendants said they will appeal Tuesday’s verdict.

Naw Kham and his gang members were found to have masterminded and colluded with Thai soldiers in an attack on two Chinese cargo ships, the Hua Ping and Yu Xing 8, on Oct. 5, 2011 on the Mekong River, the court said in an investigative report.

While four of the suspects were given the death sentence, another suspect was given a suspended death sentence, and one suspect was sentenced to eight years in prison, from AP:

Nine Thai soldiers who are accused of taking part in the killings previously surrendered but have not been tried or extradited. They remain in Thai military custody and are suspected of murder and concealing evidence, Deputy National Police Chief Police Gen. Pansiri Prapawat said Tuesday.

Sailors shipping Chinese produce and manufactured goods down the Mekong have long complained of armed gangs that loot their boats or demand cash. Little action was taken to protect them until the Oct. 5, 2011, attack near the Thai-Myanmar border, which sparked Chinese demands for a thorough investigation.

The Bangkok Post reported a few days after the killings that local Thai authorities seized both the hijacked Chinese boats after a gun battle with the gang and found cargo that included amphetamine pills worth 100 million baht ($3.22 million), garlic, apples and fuel.

The murder occurred in the ‘Golden Triangle’, which runs through China, Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos, and it is also known for its illegal drug trade. While the principal suspect, Naw Kham, has been identified as Burmese, the nationality of the other suspects is unknown, from AFP:

The reading of the verdicts was shown live on state television.

The trial finished in September after the gang of six men pleaded guilty to intentional homicide, drug trafficking, kidnapping and hijacking, state news agency Xinhua said in September.

The gang, based in Myanmar’s northern Shan state, was led by Myanmar national Naw Kham, who was one of the men sentenced to death.

At least one of the remaining five gang members is Thai, but the nationalities of the other four is unclear.

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Post tags: death sentence, drug trafficking, Golden Triangle, hijack, murder, Myanmar, thailand
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The Global Times said the men, from the Uighur minority group, died in hospital of injuries sustained trying to break into the plane’s cockpit.

Six people were detained after the incident on Friday, in which several people were injured.

The Global Times, citing unnamed officials, said the men had died “from injuries received in a fight with passengers and crew”.

The Tianjin Airlines plane had just taken off from Hotan and was bound for Urumqi when the incident occurred.

Furthermore, authorities are claiming that the two men were staging a terrorist attack, the Irish Times adds:

TWO MEN who allegedly tried to hijack a plane in far west China by battering the cockpit door with a crutch and trying to set off what were suspected to be explosives have died from injuries sustained in a fight with passengers and crew.

An overseas rights group said the incident was not a hijacking attempt but a fight over a disputed seat, but Chinese authorities insisted it was a terror attack.

“It is a serious and violent terrorist attack by means of hijacking an airplane,” ran a report on the official website for the Xinjiang region, Tianshan.

The Global Times newspaper reported that six members of the Uighur ethnic group used crutches and “held items suspected to be explosives” to break into the cockpit 10 minutes after the Tianjin Airlines flight carrying 92 passengers and nine crew members took off from Hotan to the Xinjiang capital Urumqi.

According to the Shanghai Daily, the passengers and crew would receive a monetary reward for their bravery aboard the flight:

Six police officers, five of them from the Uygur ethnic minority, were on Tianjin Airlines’ flight GS7554, the unidentified official, said to be commander of operations on the ground, told the newspaper.

The official said Liu Huijun, a passenger sitting next to the cockpit in the first-class section, was one of the first people to figure out that the hijacking was under way and he shouted out a warning to other passengers. Liu knocked an explosive device out of the hands of a hijacker but he was hit on the head.

The Xinjiang government said yesterday that each of the 10 people, including police officers, flight attendants and passengers who helped fight the hijackers, would receive a 100,000 yuan (US$15,751) reward for their bravery.

The cabin crew would also share a 500,000 yuan reward.

Tensions between Han and Uighur ethnic groups have been high in Xinjiang in recent years. Uighur rights groups to claim that the attack was actually due to a seat dispute, The Telegraph reports:

Dilxat Raxit, spokesman for the German-based World Uyghur Congress which campaigns for Uighurs’ rights, said Friday that it wasn’t a hijacking attempt but an in-flight brawl over a seat dispute.

Friday’s incident occurred just a few days before the anniversary of the July 2009 riots in Urumqi when nearly 200 people were killed in fighting between Han Chinese and Uighurs.

Tensions are already high in Hotan, where authorities raided a religious school recently and are conducting home searches, according to the Washington-based Uighur American Association.

Netizens and microbloggers have also commented on the incident, and some have claimed to have had friends on the flight. From The Guardian:

Microblog accounts from people who claim they had friends on the flights said passengers helped to overcome the men and tie them up.

One microblogger told AP: “They had a long crutch that can be broken into pieces, and the pieces had sharp ends.”

In another account, a businessman said the head of Xinjiang’s grain bureau told him that its vice director, known only as Mr Liu, had been on board and had extinguished the fuse of a homemade explosive device.

Read more about Xinjiang and the Uighur ethnic group, via CDT.

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Post tags: hijack, planes, terrorism, Uyghurs, World Uyghur Congress, Xinjiang
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A total of 11 cargo boats with 78 sailors on board began sailing into the Guanlei Port in the Dai Autonomous Prefecture of Xishuangbanna in the southwestern province of Yunnan at around 3:40 p.m.

They were greeted by crowds of anxious people, including their relatives, colleagues, local officials and residents. Firecrackers were set off in celebration, and banners reading “Welcome home!” and “Welcome back to the motherland!” were displayed along with national flags.

They embraced their relatives tightly in tears as soon as they stepped on the Chinese soil.

“We were very scared when we heard that our compatriots had been killed, and we did not dare to come back home by waterway at first,” said a sailor surnamed Wu from the boat Jinshui 12.

“We are back at last! Thank the nation! Thank the government!” he said.

The Chinese government has called for action from the three governments in the region where the attacks occurred to take action to prevent future incidents, Reuters reports:

“The Chinese government values the life and safety of every Chinese citizen and demands a thorough probe of what happened and that the murderers be brought to justice,” Vice Foreign Minister Song Tao told envoys from Thailand, Laos and Myanmar.

He told the three countries to “step up their investigation, get to the bottom of the matter as soon as possible, report their findings to China in a timely manner and … severely punish the assailants”, according to a statement on the ministry’s website (www.mfa.gov.cn).

The three must ensure the safety of Chinese sailors on the river and China will assist in ensuring that happens, the ministry paraphrased Song as saying.

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Last Wednesday, Thai border troops seized drugs on board two Chinese-flagged ships coded Yi Xing 8 Hao and Hua Ping, after a gunfight of more than 30 minutes with drug traffickers, in Chiang Saen District, bordering Myanmar. One drug trafficker was reported to have been killed.

The police found bodies of Chinese sailors late last week. Three bodies, with hands tied and handcuffed behind their backs, were found on Friday. Another nine bodies were found on Saturday.

The bodies were identified as the crew of Yi Xing 8 Hao and Hua Ping. The police suspect drug traffickers had planned to use the hijacked ships to smuggle drugs into Thailand and the sailors were killed before the gunfire on Wednesday.

A Bangkok Post report sheds more light on the identity of the drug kingpin allegedly involved and the events surrounding the hijacking:

A gang run by Nor Kham, a Shan drug trafficker, is thought to be behind the grisly murders of 12 Chinese boat crew members whose bodies were found in the Mekong River, says the army.

Maj Gen Prakarn Chonlayuth, commander of the Pa Muang Task Force, said the gang hijacks ships plying the river and demands protection money from them.

If they refuse to pay, they kill the crew and take over the ships to deliver drugs from Burma to Thailand.

… Nor Kham, 40, wanted on Thai and Burmese arrest warrants for drugs trafficking, had expanded his illegal activities to collect protection money from Chinese-flagged cargo ships a few years ago, he said.

Authorities obtained intelligence that the Nor Kham drugs gang killed all crew members of any vessel which refused to pay the gang protection money. He believes that’s what happened in this case.

About 400 armed men are thought to belong to the Nor Kham drugs gang, said Permpong Chavalit, deputy secretary-general of the Office of the Narcotics Control Board.

Meanwhile, an editorial in the Bangkok Post called on Thai and Chinese leaders to press the Burmese government to stop tolerating the drug trade in the Golden Triangle:

In 2000, the Wa strongman Pau Yu Chang promised Khin Nyunt, then a powerful member of the Burmese military junta, that he would end the drug trade by 2005.

Otherwise, he said infamously, “You can chop my head off”. It would be good to take up his offer, at least to the point of putting him under arrest. There are arrest warrants for him in Thailand and the United States. The US and Thai authorities also have warrants to arrest the Wa military leader Wei Hsueh-kang, and his corrupted Thai associate Surachai Ngernthongfu, alias Bang Ron, who has ruined the lives of thousands of his countrymen.

It would be an improvement to bring justice to these men and others. And good luck as well to the current drug crackdown under Ms Yingluck’s auspices. But for now, there is just one good solution. The new Burmese government can only be credible if it moves aggressively against the Pang Sang criminals and their drug factories, for a start. The very highest Thai and Chinese government leaders and diplomats must make this clear to Burma. The sooner the better.

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Post tags: Burma, drug trafficking, hijack, murder, thailand
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Chinese authorities say police have subdued a knife-wielding assailant and freed a busload of passengers he’d taken captive outside a major eastern city.

State media reports of Tuesday’s incident near Nanjing say at least three aboard the bus were injured and taken to a hospital. However, a city government spokesman who gave only his surname, Zhang, said all the hostages were successfully rescued and did not mention any injuries.

It wasn’t clear if the hostage taker had been killed or merely arrested.

An article in China Daily reports that the assailant was arrested and that, “casualties remain uncertain.”

The incident happened on the same day as an attack on a childcare center for migrant workers in Shanghai.

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Post tags: hijack, hostages, Nanjing, violence
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A Chinese fishing vessel with seven fishermen aboard was hijacked off the coast of Cameroon in the latest attack in the waters of West Africa’s Gulf of Guinea, the Chinese embassy in Cameroon said on Saturday.

“We are working together with the Cameroon authorities on ways and means of seeking their release,” an embassy official said of Friday’s hijack in international waters off the Bakassi peninsula.

The official said responsibility for the kidnapping had been claimed by the “Africa Marine Commando”, a group not known to have been involved any recent attacks on local shipping.

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Post tags: Cameroon, hijack, pirates
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The Global Times said authorities in Xinjiang received a report Sunday that a Kam Air flight that evening to Urumqi, the regional capital, could “possibly be threatened” by a group or groups seeking independence for the region, known as East Turkestan by the separatists.

Following takeoff, separate officials in Urumqi received further information claiming a bomb was on board, prompting them to refuse permission for it to land, the newspaper said, citing an unidentified regional official.

The flight — the private airline’s first on its new route from Kabul to Urumqi — was diverted to Kandahar in southern Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s counterterrorism chief, Abdul Manan Farahi, said there was no bomb on the plane.

Chinese authorities have provided no further details about the nature of the alleged threat, and civil and police authorities refused to comment on the incident.

Yet the story is still not clear. An article in today’s China Daily says the whole thing might have been a hoax:

Kam Air president Zamarai Kamgar, who was on the aircraft, told China Daily the entire incident “might have been a hoax”. The airline’s competitors might have been behind it, he said.

“I’m very confident about the Chinese market,” Kamgar said, stressing that from the first week of September onwards, Kam Air will be flying Tuesdays from Kabul to Urumqi as well. Now the flight is only on Sundays.

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Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported first that the plane had been hijacked, then that it had been the subject of a bomb threat.

An Afghan diplomat said the plane’s operators had not been told about a threat, just ordered to turn it back.

Xinhua said the plane later landed in Kandahar, quoting diplomatic sources.

China’s state news agency did not give any details of the reported threat to the plane. But it said that armed police and emergency vehicles had rushed to Urumqi airport just in case.

However a press officer for Nato forces in Afghanistan – which control Kandahar airport – told the Associated Press news agency that he had received no report of a plane forced to land.

Al Jazeera provides another explanation for the plane’s failure to land in Urumqi:

China’s official Xinhua news agency on Sunday reported that the aircraft had received a bomb threat, but later reports said the aeroplane had been diverted simply because it lacked the necessary documents.

An Afghan air traffic source and airport police said that the airline had failed to obtain the correct paperwork needed to land.

The KamAir flight departed from Kabul, the Afghan capital, bound for Urumqi, but landed in the southern city of Kandahar after being refused landing in China.

The flight landed in Kandahar rather than Kabul because of high winds in the capital, Afghan sources said.

And, confusing the situation further, a more recent Xinhua report says a mechanical failure may have been the culprit:

The airport official said the plane made the unexpected landing due to some “mechanical problem”.

Meantime, president of Kam Airlines, Zamarai Kamgar, told Xinhua that it is the first flight day for Kam from Kabul to Urumqi and the plane was refused by Kyrgyzstan to pass its territory.

The Boeing-767 plane was carrying more than 200 passengers, including five Chinese.

“The plane chose to land in Kandahar city at first step because weather condition in Kabul was not suitable at that time,” Kamgar added.

[...] Earlier, armed police sources in Xinjiang said the Afghan plane scheduled to Urumqi was bomb threatened.

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