China reports arrest of "major terrorist group" in far west (Roundup)

Jun 24, 2010, 11:41 GMT

Beijing - Chinese police on Thursday said they had detained more than 10 members of a 'major terrorist group' operating in the troubled far-western region of Xinjiang.

Some of the suspects were accused of involvement in two deadly attacks in Xinjiang's Kashgar and Kuqa towns in 2008, said Wu Heping, a spokesman for the Ministry of Public Security.

Wu said the suspects were among a group of 20 Chinese citizens returned to China from an unnamed nation in December.

Cambodia drew international criticism after it expelled 20 asylum seekers from the Uighur ethnic minority in December at China's request. The move sparked outrage among human rights groups and the US government, who said they feared the deportees would face persecution and mistreatment, including torture, in China.

Two men named by Wu as ringleaders of the terrorist group had Uighur names.

Wu said the arrests showed that China faced a 'terrorist threat' from the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) and other groups in Xinjiang, which is known as East Turkestan by some Uighurs seeking independence from China.

He said the suspects confessed to police that they had prepared knives, axes and home-made explosives for planned terrorist attacks in Xinjiang's Kashgar, Hotan and Aksu towns between July and October.

Once police in Xinjiang began investigating, the group members fled abroad by crossing a border in southern China with the help of overseas ETIM members, Wu said.

When asked later Thursday about the apparent repatriation of the suspects from Cambodia, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang declined to comment.

But Qin said the 'three forces' of terrorists, separatists and religious extremists had been 'rampant' in recent years and posed a 'threat to regional security and the stability of provinces in China.'

'To combat terrorism, including the East Turkestan organization, is the consensus of the international community,' he said.

'We hope cooperation in this field can be further strengthened,' Qin said.

China's approximately 10 million Uighurs have long complained of suppression by Beijing both politically and culturally while the government is afraid of separatist tendencies in Xinjiang.

Last year, the government claimed it had evidence ETIM was planning attacks in October around the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China and the Xinjiang Autonomous Region.

It also reported several terrorist incidents and alleged plots by Uighur groups in the run-up to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.

China said 12 people died after a series of terrorist attacks in Kuqa in August 2008.

At least two Uighurs were sentenced to death after an attack in August 2008 in Kashgar, China's westernmost city, that killed 17 paramilitary police and left 15 injured, the government said.

In January 2007, China said its forces killed 18 suspected terrorists and destroyed an ETIM training camp in Xinjiang.

It claimed evidence that ETIM, which with US support was listed by the United Nations as an international terrorist group, had more than 1,000 members trained by al-Qaeda.

International experts cast doubts on China's account of the incident.

The government has previously said terrorists were responsible for 200 incidents that killed 162 people in Xinjiang from 1990 to 2001.

The ruling Communist Party this week began a propaganda campaign to promote its message of 'stability and prosperity' in Xinjiang in the run-up to the anniversary of ethnic rioting that left about 200 people dead in the regional capital in July.