China Launches Manhunt for Alleged Terrorist Mastermind

An explosion shook the Urumqi South Railway Station in northwest China’s Xinjiang region just hours after President Xi Jinping wrapped up a four-day visit to the area earlier this year.

Associated Press

Chinese police have launched an international manhunt for a member of a separatist organization suspected of plotting a knife-and-bomb attack at a train station in the northwestern region of Xinjiang in April, official media reported. As the WSJ’s Jeremy Page reports:

Police are accusing the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, or ETIM, for the attack that left three people dead in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, on April 30, the government’s news agency, Xinhua, reported on Sunday.

Xinhua quoted local authorities as saying the attack was planned outside China by an ETIM member identified as Ismail Yusup and was carried out by 10 of his partners. Two of the 10 were killed in the blast, while the rest were captured, the report said.
It was the first time authorities have alleged involvement by separatists. Chinese authorities had previously said two religious extremists were responsible.The attack came a few hours after President Xi Jinping visited a mosque in Urumqi at the end of his first trip to Xinjiang since coming to power. Xinhua didn’t say how authorities had identified Mr. Yusup nor say where he is believed to be.

The report said police were hunting for him in cooperation with the International Criminal Police Organization, or Interpol. Interpol didn’t respond to a request for comment and Mr. Yusup’s name didn’t turn up in a search on its website of “red notices,” which are issued for people wanted internationally.
Xinjiang, which shares a border with Pakistan and Afghanistan, is home to the mostly Muslim Uighur ethnic group, some of whose members have been waging a decadeslong campaign against Chinese rule there.
While most attacks have targeted police, government buildings and other symbols of state power, the Urumqi attack and two other recent ones—a mass stabbing at a railway station in southwest China and a car crash and fire off Beijing’s Tiananmen Square—caused terror and casualties among civilians.

Many Uighur activists refer to their homeland as East Turkistan and accuse Beijing of restricting religious freedom and flooding the region with non-Uighur migrants who they say get preferential access to jobs, education and public services.The Chinese government has long accused the ETIM and its affiliates of perpetrating terrorist attacks in China and having links to foreign terrorist organizations including al Qaeda.
Source: WSJ