A mainland court yesterday sentenced to death 13 members of a pirate gang who slaughtered 23 crewmen on board a Hong Kong-owned freighter.
The death sentences for the murders aboard the Cheung Son during a 10-day hijacking came at the end of the largest piracy case in China in the past 50 years.
The Cheung Son killings happened in November last year when 23 crew members, including 15 Chinese Communist Party members, were bludgeoned to death one by one and their bodies weighted and thrown into the sea. More than 10 bodies were later found along the coast of Shanwei.
Shanwei Intermediate People's Court handed down sentences to 37 mainlanders and one Indonesian involved in the hijack.
Twelve gang members, including leaders Weng Siliang, 27, Indonesian Wei Suoni, 27, and Jia Hongwei, 25, convicted of both murder and robbery, were sentenced to death.
Huang Daming, 33, who lent his boat, formerly used for Customs inspections, to the pirates and provided them with Customs officers' uniforms, was also sentenced to death.
