1st LD-Writethru: Drug dealers sentenced to death in China

A court in Zhuhai City in south China's Guangdong Province sentenced four convicted drug dealers to death on Thursday, ahead of the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking on Sunday.

Two were given a two-year reprieve, Zhuhai City's Intermediate People's Court announced.

Thirteen other members of the same gang, which sold about 5 kilograms of drugs including methamphetamine, were given life sentences or varying prison terms, the court said.

In Guangdong's Lufeng City, five drug-related criminals were executed on Thursday.

Guangdong is a hotbed of production and trade in drugs. The provincial narcotics control commission announced that from January to May, local police closed more than 6,000 drug cases and seized more than 10 tonnes of drugs, dismantling 49 drug production dens, detaining or arresting more than 10,000 suspects, according to Guo Shaobo, deputy head of the provincial public security department.

Police in Qingyuan City caught 12 drug producers and confiscated 492 kg of ketamine. Another meth lab hidden in a trash collection station in Huizhou City was raided and over 700 kg of meth seized.

In addition, Guangdong police have caught 243 foreign drug-related suspects and more than 500 from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan since 2015.

Also on Thursday in Beijing, a 22-year-old man who was caught at a Beijing railway station in Nov. 2015 after alighting a train from Guangdong was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for transporting 2 kilograms of methamphetamine.

On Wednesday in Xuzhou City in east China's Jiangsu Province, three members of a drug gang were sentenced to death. It was the biggest drug case ever seen in Xuzhou, involving more than 29 kilograms of methamphetamine and ketamine, the city's intermediate people's court said. Endi