Stung by international criticism, China announced it...

Stung by international criticism, China announced it was holding a retrial of two Nepalese on death row but warned this should not be used as an excuse to target the Chinese judicial system. The intermediate court of China's Tibet Autonomous Region had sentenced two Nepalese traders Ishwori Kumar Shrestha and Rabi Dahal to death on May 30. According to the Chinese authorities, the two men were arrested in 2003 while trying to smuggle heroin into Khasa near the Sino-Nepal border. The case hit the headlines when the wife of Ishwori Kumar Shrestha, Purnamaya, came to Kathmandu with her two minor sons, petitioning rights organisations and the Chinese embassy in Kathmandu to free her husband. She claimed he was innocent.