A court in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou has sentenced an American to death for murdering his girlfriend. The Ningbo Intermediate People’s Court in Zhejiang Province sentenced Shadeed Abdulmateen to death yesterday for killing a 21-year-old Chinese woman last June, according to a report in the Global Times.
According to the newspaper, Abdulmateen taught at Ningbo University of Technology and entered into a relationship with the woman, named Chen, in early 2019.
Two years later, Chen tried to break off the relationship with Abdulmateen several times, but he refused. The China Daily says Abdulmateen arranged to meet Chen the night of June 12, 2021 to talk, and at about 9:48 p.m. he repeatedly stabbed her in the neck with a flip knife, killing her.
The court found Abdulmateen guilty of intentional homicide for deliberately killing Chen and claimed the defendant’s due-process rights were respected during the trial. Amnesty International has called China “the world’s top executioner” though the actual number of people put to death in the country is unknown.
In 2020, there were at least 483 executions in 18 nations, but that tally does not include executions that took place in some countries, such as China. The tally would be much higher if it included “the thousands of executions believed to have been carried out in China,” Amnesty International says.
