China suspends 80-yr-old smuggler death sentence

Beijing, Apr 16: An 80-year-old Chinese woman has been given a suspended death sentence for smuggling eight kg of opium, the payment from which she wanted to buy a decent tomb, Xinhua news agency said.

Zhang Shouzhen, a native of the southwestern province of Guizhou, was persuaded by a drug dealer to ship the opium to Beijing by train for 10,000 yuan (1,295 dollars) last August, Xinhua said.

''I had wanted the money for a good plot of land as my graveyard,'' the official news agency quoted Zhang as saying at her trial.

But she was caught by police along with her daughter and the daughter's ex-husband, who were helping Zhang, when they got off the train in Shijiazhuang, 300 km short of Beijing, Xinhua said.

Chinese drug traffickers have a record of hiring ordinary people, in some cases pregnant women, to ship drugs, but cases involving the elderly are rare.

A Guizhou court handed down the sentence to Zhang ''recently'', Xinhua said without elaborating. Her daughter and the ex-husband were jailed for 15 years and 12 years respectively.

China's criminal code stipulates harsh sentences for drug-related crimes. Those caught can be executed for trafficking 1 kg of opium.

Xinhua did not say if the court had meted out the suspended death sentence, which was usually commuted to life imprisonment on condition of good behaviour, because of her age.

''I am an illiterate and I did not know I would break the law and implicate my daughter,'' Xinhua quoted Zhang as saying.

Reuters