Eight members of the largest-ever organised crime ring in Gansu province were put to death on Wednesday. Twenty-nine others were sentenced to various jail terms after the province's top court rejected their appeals.
Brothers Li Zhi, Li Bin, Li Jie and Li Hui, and the other criminals they collaborated with, committed enough crimes from 1997 to last year to fill nearly 7,000 pages of police records, and were found to be responsible for 24 separate cases, including six murders, Xinhua reported.
Although Li Bin has fled the country, Li Jie and Li Hui were among the eight executed immediately after the Gansu Province Higher People's Court upheld the Lanzhou City Intermediate People's Court earlier ruling. Li Zhi, considered the gang's leader, was shot dead in a gun battle with a rival gang in March last year in Lanzhou's Chengguan district.
According to the report, many of the crimes were committed under the cover of Li Zhi's Lanzhou Zhihua Work Commodity Company. Founded in 1997, and staffed largely by former inmates from re-education-through-labour camps, the company was used as a front to buy knives and guns and to conceal illegally obtained goods, weapons and money.
In July last year, Gansu police - working to root out triads - identified the 'Li Family Gang' as the largest, and during the next eight months made arrests in more than 30 Gansu counties.
In the process of apprehending members of the gang, police confiscated 17 guns and 191 rounds of ammunition.
