Ten robbers and rapists were put to death in Beijing

Ten robbers and rapists were put to death in Beijing. They were executed as part of a nationwide crackdown on crime as China tidies up before a key Communist Party congress, the Beijing Daily said.
The convicted included a band of jobless migrants from the central province of Hubei province who went on a spree of 24 violent thefts, the newspaper said.
Fan Song, Zhao Peng, Qiu Jianwei and Huang Zizhou knocked down the doors of their victims, beat and threatened them with knives and electric shock batons, bound them with ropes and belts and gagged them with clothing, it said.
The gang then robbed them of mobile phones, pagers, gold and silver jewellery and more than one million yuan (about HK$933,600) in cash, it said.
During one heist, Qiu raped a woman, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Beijing natives Wang Shusen and Wang Yonggang raped several women and stole a total of 15,000 yuan in 11 attacks on women taxi drivers in the capital and neighbouring Hebei province.
No details of the other executed convicts were given.
Since China launched a nationwide crackdown on robberies in mid-July, Beijing courts have dealt with 82 such cases involving 140 accused. Some 70 percent were sentenced to penalties ranging from five years to death, Xinhua said.