Eight members of the largest-ever organised crime ring...

Eight members of the largest-ever organised crime ring in Gansu province were put to death. Twenty-nine others were sentenced to various jail terms after the province's top court rejected their appeals. Brothers Li Zhi, Li Bin, Li Jie and Li Hui, and the other criminals they collaborated with, committed enough crimes from 1997 to last year to fill nearly 7,000 pages of police records, and were found to be responsible for 24 separate cases, including six murders.Although Li Bin has fled the country, Li Jie and Li Hui were among the eight executed immediately after the Gansu Province Higher People's Court upheld the Lanzhou City Intermediate People's Court earlier ruling. Li Zhi, considered the gang's leader, was shot dead in a gun battle with a rival gang in March 2000 in Lanzhou's Chengguan district.