BEIJING - A court in western China sentenced three people to death for planning a deadly car ramming at Beijing’s iconic Tiananmen Gate that was blamed on Muslim separatists, state media reported. The three were accused of helping prepare for the October 28 attack, in which a car plowed through tourists and ended up in a fiery crash in the heart of Beijing, killing two bystanders and the three attackers. A court in the Xinjiang regional capital of Urumqi sentenced the three to death, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Five other people were given prison sentences, with four receiving terms of five to 20 years and one getting a life sentence. It was not clear what role those five had played in the attack. The eight were arrested within days of the incident. A Chinese visitor and a tourist from the Philippines were killed in the attack, along with the vehicle’s driver, his wife and mother-in-law, according to Chinese authorities.
The attack was the first to strike Beijing in recent years. It pointed to a new level of violence and lethal intent in the long-simmering insurgency against Chinese rule in the far northwestern region of Xinjiang waged by radicals among the native Turkic Uighur Muslim population. The Tiananmen Gate attack was followed by similar incidents in Xinjiang, including one on May 22 in which men driving off-road vehicles and throwing explosives plowed through a crowded market in Urumqi, killing 39 people.