The Daily Telegraph

Thousands witness 10 sentenced to death

- By Neil Connor in Beijing Additional reporting by Christine Wei

THOUSANDS of onlookers turned up at a sports stadium in southern China to watch 10 people condemned to death for drug-related crimes.

The sentencing took place at the makeshift court at Lufeng, in southern Guangdong province, on Saturday. The prisoners were led away and reportedly executed immediatel­y after the sentencing. It was the culminatio­n of a high-profile crackdown on the drugs trade in the area, which has seen Lufeng become one of the country’s largest sources of methamphet­amine.

Twelve defendants – it is not clear what became of the other two – were brought to the stadium by police in trucks and their sentences were read out to the crowd, some of whom were in school uniform.

Rights groups say China executes more people than any other nation as Communist Party-controlled courts have a 99.9 per cent conviction rate.

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