A court in China sentenced three Uighur Muslim separatists to death for last October’s deadly attack at the gate to Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.  Another defendant was sentenced to life in prison and four more received prison terms of five to 20 years.

The trial took place all the way across the country in Urumqi, capital of Xianjiang province, which Uighur separatists refer to as “East Turkistan”.  The court found that suspects formed a “terrorist group” in 2011 and plotted violent acts, acquiring weapons and explosives for the attack in Beijing. 

On 28 October, 2013, a truck carrying three people plowed through the crowd waiting to get into the square and crashed into a pedestrian bridge in front of the Forbidden City.  Six people died, inducing three terrorists in the truck, and 39 people were injured.  Police rounded up all of the suspects within 10 hours of the attack.

It was the kick off to a series of attacks attributed to Uighur separatists. The biggest of those occurred in March, when attackers with knives and swords hacked away at passengers in the Kunming train station in southern China, killing 29 people.  A suicide bombing at a vegetable market in Urumqi last month killed 39 people.