Most executions in China are carried out with a single shot to the head, but it apparently took eight bullets to despatch five members of a Hong Kong kidnap gang led by a gangster known as "Big Spender" in the southern city of Guangzhou on Saturday afternoon.
The death sentence on Cheung Tze-keung (43) and his comrades was carried out shortly after the People's High Court in Guang zhou rejected their appeals against convictions for kidnapping and other violent crimes, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
The sentence and executions have enormous implications for China's relationship with Hong Kong, which was handed back to the mainland last year under a one country, two systems policy, guaranteeing its autonomy for 50 years. Cheung, a Hong Kong resident, was accused of committing crimes in Hong Kong where he kidnapped and held for ransom two property tycoons.
Two of those executed with him, Chan Chi-hou (36) and Chin Hon-sau (43), were also Hong Kong citizens. Chinese authorities seized the gang in Guangzhou and convicted them on the grounds that they had plotted the kidnappings on Chinese territory.
Hong Kong did not press for the defendants to be returned, saying the families of the kidnap victims had refused to lodge a complaint.
Amnesty International described as "dubious" the assertions by the court and the Hong Kong government that trial in China under the Chinese Criminal Code was appropriate in a case where the alleged crimes took place in Hong Kong, where there is no death penalty.
The human rights organisation alleged that little reliable evidence had been presented to prove that all the crimes were plotted, planned and prepared on the mainland and therefore could be tried on the mainland.
"For example, Cheung Tzekeung is the alleged major culprit who supposedly organised and planned the illegal purchase of explosives, although he did not buy or smuggle them on the mainland," it said.
Amnesty said "evidence of his leading role was limited to a wish he expressed for explosives during a conversation with a co-defendant in Macau, his participation in off-loading the shipment in Hong Kong, and a regular payment to a co-defendant from Hong Kong". The organisation also noted that a Hong Kong government official had acknowledged that much of the evidence presented at the trial would be inadmissible in Hong Kong. Prison authorities granted Cheung a final request to see his two sons, aged four and seven on Friday. Despite pleas from defence lawyers that "Big Spender" had co-operated with the police, the five-member appeals court ruled on Saturday that all the reasons for appeal were groundless, Xinhua said.
The men were convicted for a range of crimes, including kidnapping Mr Victor Li Tzar-kuoi and Mr Sun Hung Kai. The five were taken from the court to a field and shot. According to a reliable report, eight bullets had to be used. Two other gang members also received death sentences, but their executions were suspended for two years. Twenty-nine others received prison terms of up to life.
Political analysts in Hong Kong said that China's action was designed to send a message to criminals in southern China that it was deadly serious about stamping out crime. Macau in particular has recently been plagued by a series of murders and bombings in a vicious struggle over gambling interests. The Portuguese-ruled enclave will revert to Chinese rule in December 1999.