On Thursday, China’s judiciary upheld on appeal the death sentence of an American convicted of stabbing his Chinese girlfriend who wanted to break up with him.
Shadid Abdul-Mateen’s conviction was handed down in April by a trial court in Ningbo (east), the city where the crime took place, before he later appealed it.
Shadid Abdel-Mateen met his victim in 2019, before they were romantically involved. His 21-year-old girlfriend asked to break up with him in May 2021, but he refused. The following month, he stabbed her in the neck and face. The US Embassy in China did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.
The number of people executed each year in China is a state secret. But the death penalty for citizens of Western countries is rare. China reduced the number of crimes punishable by death from 55 to 46 in 2015, including separatism, premeditated murder, rape and drug smuggling. According to Xinhua, the last Western passport holder executed in China was Akmal Sheikh, a British man executed in China in 2009 for smuggling heroin.
