[Mr. Yao, a student at a local music conservatory, was driving a Chevy Cruze in Xi’an last Oct. 20 when he struck Ms. Zhang, who was riding a bicycle. She was not seriously injured, according to news reports. But when Mr. Yao realized that she was memorizing his license plate number, he stabbed her eight times with a knife. He said later that he feared the woman, a poor peasant, would “be hard to deal with” should she seek compensation for her injuries.]
PAKISTAN TALIBAN VOW TO ATTACK US TARGETS OVERSEAS
BEIJING — A 21-year-old music student who accidentally struck a young woman with his car, then silenced her by stabbing her to death on the roadway, was executed Tuesday in Xi’an, in northwestern China, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The student, Yao Jiaxin, had lost an appeal of a death sentence handed down by a Xi’an court on April 22. The crime had fanned deep public resentment against the “fu er dai,” the “rich second generation” of privileged families who are widely believed to commit misdeeds with impunity because of their wealth or connections.
Mr. Yao was the son of employees of a state-owned corporation in China’s defense sector, one of them an executive and a military officer. The victim, Zhang Miao, 26, was a peasant.
Mr. Yao, a student at a local music conservatory, was driving a Chevy Cruze in Xi’an last Oct. 20 when he struck Ms. Zhang, who was riding a bicycle. She was not seriously injured, according to news reports. But when Mr. Yao realized that she was memorizing his license plate number, he stabbed her eight times with a knife. He said later that he feared the woman, a poor peasant, would “be hard to deal with” should she seek compensation for her injuries.
Mr. Yao was detained after a second auto accident that night and initially denied killing Ms. Zhang, but turned himself in two days later.
Ms. Zhang’s murder came just four days after another privileged son, Li Qiming, struck and killed a young university student with his automobile in Hebei Province, then fled the scene after telling guards who sought to stop him, “My father is Li Gang,” a local police official. Both crimes stirred national outrage on China’s social-networking Web sites; in January, Li Qiming was sentenced to six years in prison.
Ms. Zhang’s husband, Wang Hui, had rejected court-ordered compensation of about $6,900 for her death, calling it “money stained with blood.” He pledged to delay Ms. Zhang’s burial until her killer was executed.
A Shanghai lawyer later donated 540,000 renminbi, about $83,300, to her survivors after pledging to pay one renminbi for each message sent to the husband over Sina Weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter.
On Tuesday, public reaction on Weibo to the execution varied, with some calling it a victory for the rule of law and others calling Mr. Yao a victim of Internet-style mob rule.
One prominent Beijing lawyer, Liu Xiaoyuan, noted that it was highly unusual for courts to hand down a death sentence to someone who had turned himself in. A well-known blogger known as Beihei said that Mr. Yao “was shouted to death by the people,” adding, “The Cultural Revolution was started because of this kind of leftist behavior.”
A third well-known commentator in the Chinese media, Li Qianfan, wrote: “In a country guided by the rule of law, people would not clap their hands in joy over soon being executed. What I really hope to see is not the death of Yao Jiaxin, but the legal system being able to provide protection to the people.”
PAKISTAN TALIBAN VOW TO ATTACK US TARGETS OVERSEAS
Top Taliban commander Omar Khalid Khorasani says death of Osama bin Laden has given his fighters 'new courage
By Jason Burke
A senior commander from Pakistan's Taliban, an ideological ally of al-Qaida, has said the movement plans to attack US targets abroad to avenge the death of Osama bin Laden.
The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Taliban Movement of Pakistan, first threatened to avenge Bin Laden immediately after the raid by US special forces in the northern Pakistani town of Abbottabad on 2 May in which the al-Qaida leader was killed.
Since Bin Laden's death, militants from the group, possibly in alliance with other extremist organisations, have attacked repeatedly in Pakistan, bombing an American consulate convoy, laying siege to a naval base and blowing up cadets from the paramilitary Frontier Corps.
However, the Taliban, like several other militant groups, appear to be increasingly adopting at least the language of "global jihad" popularised by al-Qaida.
Omar Khalid Khorasani, the top Taliban commander in Mohmand, one of Pakistan's restive tribal agencies, told Reuters that recent TTP attacks in Pakistan were only the start of bloody reprisals after Bin Laden's death.
"These attacks were just a part of our revenge. God willing, the world will see how we avenge Osama bin Laden's martyrdom," said Khorasani. "We have networks in several countries outside Pakistan."
Though counter-intelligence officials believe such claims are exaggerated, the TTP has already been linked to two overseas failed attacks. One, in Spain, never went beyond planning stages. However a second saw a Pakistani-American place a large bomb in Times Square last year. It failed to explode because the timer had been wrongly set.
Hakimullah Mehsud, leader of the TTP, appeared in a video with the Jordanian double agent who blew himself up in a fortified US base in Afghanistan last year, in the second most deadly attack in CIA history. Seven CIA officials were killed.
"Our war against America is continuing inside and outside of Pakistan. When we launch attacks, it will prove that we can hit American targets outside Pakistan," said Khorasani.
Khorasani said the death of Bin Laden would not demoralise the Taliban but had injected a "new courage" into its fighters. "The ideology given to us by Osama bin Laden and the spirit and courage that he gave to us to fight infidels of the world is alive," said Khorasani.
In what may be a significant move, he described Ayman al-Zawahri, the veteran Egyptian militant who is the likely successor to Bin Laden at the head of al-Qaida, as the Pakistani Taliban's "chief and supreme leader".
Khorasani is a minor figure but several affiliates of al-Qaida have come out in support of Zawahiri in recent weeks, despite the reservations and ambitions of other senior figures within the group.
Nato officials in Afghanistan told the Guardian that the death of Bin Laden had led to an increase in the number of insurgents in that country looking to lay down their arms.
A series of contacts are under way between insurgents fighting in Afghanistan and the Afghan and US governments though none appear likely to result in any breakthrough soon.
The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, said on Saturday there could be political talks with the Afghan Taliban by the end of this year if Nato made more military advances.
This would not alter the strategy of the TTP, Khorasani said. "Even if some rapprochement is reached in Afghanistan, our ideology, aim and objective is to change the system in Pakistan," he added.
The vast bulk of the victims of the TTP have been other Pakistanis.
The coalition of varied and fragmented militant groups in the tribal agencies of Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan was formally founded in late 2007. However many of the groups drawn together under its umbrella existed long before.
