bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

sponsorType

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

SCMP Reporter

Kashgar party chief says pair held for killing police confessed to assault plot
Letters written by two Uygur men  arrested on suspicion of carrying out Monday's attack on police in Kashgar , Xinjiang , showed they had answered a call for holy war against China, the city's Communist Party chief said.
Shi Dagang linked the pair with a banned militant group.
Sixteen 16 officers were killed and 16 injured in the attack outside a hotel and the border police barracks.
The suspects were identified as vegetable peddler Abdurahman Azat, 33, and taxi driver Kurbanjan Hemit, 28, said Mr Shi.  Both are  natives of Kashgar.
He said the suspects had been captured at the scene of the attack after ramming a truck into a team of border police on a morning jog and detonating home-made explosives. The pair had confessed, he added.
In their confession, the men said they had observed closely for more than a month the time and route the Kashgar border police took on their morning jog before carrying out the attack, Mr Shi told a news conference yesterday.
The truck used in the raid was stolen and parked near the Kashgar border police division the night  before the attack.
'We found testaments on one of the suspects saying that the attack was more important than their lives or the prosperity of their families and even the well-being of their mothers. They have to carry out jihad,' the party chief said.
He blamed the attack on a militant pro-independence Uygur group called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), saying the weapons and methods used in Monday's incident were similar to those used by 'the East Turkestan terrorists'.
Mr Shi said the ETIM had claimed at the beginning of the year that it would launch a 'terrorist attack' every month, and had sent seven instructions to 'terrorist forces' inside China.
'They are trying to turn 2008 into a year of mourning and a year of terror,' he said, without revealing the source of his information.
In two statements posted on the internet on June 26 and 27, the ETIM had asked residents in northwestern China to wage a 'holy war' against local authorities through blasts and poisonings, he said.
The group had also used the internet to teach people how to carry out attacks and make explosives.
They [mainland militants]  learned how to make explosives and toxics themselves from foreign  terrorists,'  he said.
'[These groups said] the Beijing Olympics was the last opportunity to [destabilise] China,' Mr Shi said. '[They said] even though we know it might be like 'using an egg to crack a stone',   we would rather die trying.'
He said  local militants  were  taking orders from 'overseas terrorist groups' who planned the attacks. But he did not explain where these groups were based.
'We have plenty of evidence showing that the terrorist organisations plan to wage psychological, digital and information warfare on the Chinese people,' he said, adding that the police were prepared for the challenges.
But in the regional capital, Urumqi , the head of the Xinjiang public security department, Liu Yaohua, cautioned against linking the attack in Kashgar with the ETIM.
Mr Liu said there was no  evidence the attack was linked to the ETIM.
'Insufficient evidence has been found to say for sure the ETIM was behind Monday's deadly attack,' Mr Liu said at a separate media briefing.
He  confirmed that the two suspects had confessed their crime.
Mr Shi said  the  police had  the ability and confidence to win the war with 'terrorist forces' eventually.



Attack suspects 'wrote of holy war'