Beijing - A court in China's far-western region of Xinjiang on Thursday sentenced to death five more people from the Uighur ethnic group who were convicted of violent crimes during riots in July. The official Xinhua news agency quoted court documents in the regional capital, Urumqi, as saying the five Uighurs were sentenced to death for crimes including murder.
The Urumqi Intermediate People's Court sentenced two others to life in prison and gave lesser prison sentences to six more defendants, the agency said.
It said the trials of the 13 Uighurs were open and held in their own language, watched by hundreds of people, including relatives of the defendants and the victims.
The sentences followed the execution in early November of eight Uighurs and one Han Chinese man convicted of murder during the rioting in Urumqi in July.
The deadly rioting began after a protest over the deaths of two Uighurs in the southern city of Shaoguan.
The protests escalated into clashes with police and attacks by Uighurs against Han residents of Urumqi.
The violence left 197 people dead and about 1,600 injured, according to the government. Uighur exile groups claimed that up to 800 people died in Urumqi, many of them Uighurs shot or beaten to death by police.
The agency said the Urumqi court planned to try defendants in five more cases linked to the violence on Friday.
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