Taiwan returns two 1990s hijackers to China

TAIPEI, Aug 14 (Reuters) Taiwan sent two convicted aircraft hijackers back to their homeland China today, where they could face new trials and possible execution.

Taiwan authorities returned hijackers Lin Wenqiang and Yang Mingde to China from a port near the Chinese coast with help from the local Red Cross Society, the government's Mainland Affairs Council said in a statement.

Both had just finished jail terms in Taiwan.

Lin and Yang were among 18 people -- hoping for political asylum in Taiwan -- who diverted planes from China in a series of hijackings the mid-1990s. Taiwan has returned 17 people to date, with one remaining.

China has claimed sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949. Beijing has vowed to bring the island back under mainland rule, by force if necessary.

As Beijing does not recognise Taiwan's court rulings it may retry the two returnees for hijacking, a crime that carries the death penalty in China.

China has retried hijackers since the 1980s, said Nicolas Becquelin, a researcher with Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong.

''China takes a pretty dire view of hijacking, and it's definitely a crime for which the death penalty is one option,'' Bacquelin said.

In 1994, Lin, then 35, dressed up as a Chinese policeman and used a fruit knife and a fake bomb to force a China Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 carrying 130 people into Taipei.

Yang, then 31, was convicted of hijacking a Sichuan Airlines Tupolev 154 with a knife and explosives in 1993.

Both served nine-year jail terms in Taiwan for hijacking and four more years apiece for injuring Taiwan aviation workers.

Taiwan once welcomed fugitives from the mainland as heroes seeking freedom from communism. But in the 1990s, Taiwan cracked down on hijackers to stabilise relations with China.

REUTERS SBC KP1539