Chinese woman gets death in retrial for trafficking 17 children
Yu Huaying was sentenced to death for abducting and trafficking 17 children, in a retrial by a court in southwest China's Guizhou Province on Friday.
Yu, 61, from Guizhou's neighboring province of Yunnan, and a man surnamed Gong, who has died during investigation, abducted children from Chongqing, Yunnan and Guizhou and trafficked them to Hebei Province in northern China between 1993 and 2003.
On September 18 last year, Yu was sentenced to death by the Guiyang Intermediate People's Court in a first-instance verdict for trafficking 11 children. She expressed her intention to appeal.
Prosecutors later found evidence linking her to the trafficking of six more children.
The Guiyang court heard that Yu had abducted and sold a total of 17 children," including five pairs of siblings. It caused immense pain and suffering to 12 families who were "torn apart and had their kinship bonds broken," the court heard.
The court sentenced Yu to death, deprived her of her political rights for life, and ordered all of her personal property confiscated.
Yu said at the court hearing on Friday that she would appeal the verdict.