Free Republic

(BEIJING) - A 19-year-old woman has allegedly confessed to a "terror plot" aimed at an aircraft flying from the Muslim west of China to the capital Beijing. State media said the girl, named for the first time as Guzalinur Turdi, was trying to cause a fire above the wing. She had injected two drinks cans with petrol, which she had placed in the waste-paper bin in the toilet, when she was spotted by an air stewardess. The revelation of the "terror attack" was made during the National People's Congress, or parliament session, in Beijing this month by senior officials from...

BEIJING, Feb 9 (Reuters) - China has executed a Uighur activist in a far-northwestern city for attempting to "split the motherland" and possessing explosives, drawing condemnation from a human rights group which said the evidence was insufficient. Ismail Semed, who was deported to China from Pakistan in 2003, had told the court a confession had been coerced, but he was executed nevertheless on Thursday in Urumqi, capital of the predominantly Muslim region of Xinjiang, Radio Free Asia on Friday quoted his widow, Buhejer, as saying. "When the body was transferred to us at the cemetery I saw only one bullet...