China has cracked two terrorist groups in its heavily Muslim west that were planning attacks aimed at the Beijing Olympics, the nation's security ministry says.
One group was plotting to kidnap foreign journalists, tourists and athletes during the Games, Chinese police said.
"The terrorists, who numbered 45 in all, had attempted to carry out sabotage to undermine the Beijing Olympic Games,'' the official Xinhua news agency quoted Public Security Ministry spokesman Wu Heping as saying today.
In one case, police in the western Xinjiang region January broke up a group "sent from abroad'' by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement to stage a violent attack, it said.
Police seized a large amount of explosives, materials used in manufacturing explosive and Islamic "Jihad'' training materials, according to Wu.
Wu said all the suspects involved had confessed.
Xinhua provided no details on the second case.
China maintains it faces an imminent terror threat from the independence-minded East Turkestan Islamic Movement, which is listed by the United Nations and the United States as a terrorist organisation.
Xinjiang officials had already said last month that police on January 27 smashed a terrorist group planning an attack on the Beijing Olympics and that a separate bid to blow up a Chinese airliner was foiled in March.
Now, far from me to suggest that these terrorists don't exist - but as if all this horseshit about cracking their network isn't a carefully orchestrated gimmick to make people go "aww, those repressive dictators are ok after all". As I said about five years ago, the Olympics are dead the moment they open in Beijing. God knows how many people killed so Nike can flog a billion pairs of shoes. Shame that the national thirst for bronze medals is too strong to see us take a stand and tell them to cram their games.
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