Olympics plot reported by Chinese

BEIJING – The Chinese government announced Thursday that it had busted an Islamic terror ring that had intended to stage suicide bombings and kidnap athletes, tourists and journalists to sabotage the 2008 summer Olympics.

The Public Security Ministry said that 45 people were arrested from two terror cells in and around Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital, in January and last week.

Ministry officials said authorities confiscated explosives, poisons, detonators and literature calling for a jihad or holy war. The suspects confessed to plans to blow themselves up in Urumqi and to attack hotels, government buildings and military buildings in Shanghai and Beijing, the ministry said.

“The terrorism group was secretly recruiting members in China … and many times they sent members abroad for training,” Public Security spokesman Wu Heping said at a news conference. “Their aim was to undermine the Beijing Olympics.”

But authorities offered little evidence to support the claim, leading to some skepticism. In the past, human-rights experts say, China has exaggerated claims of terrorist plots as an excuse to crack down on its restive minority population.

With embarrassing protests taking place inside and outside of China, including San Francisco, where officials Wednesday kept changing the route for the Olympic torch, China has been rounding up potential troublemakers in its western provinces.

Ministry officials said the suspects were part of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a little-known group from western China. East Turkestan is a name sometimes used by ethnic Uighars, an ethnic Turkic people, to refer to China’s Xinjiang province. In 2002, the United States labeled the East Turkestan Islamic Movement a terror group.