Four people convicted of abducting and selling 19 boys were sentenced to death Thursday by the Kunming Intermediate People's Court in southwest China' Yunnan Province.

Four others convicted of assisting the abductions were sentenced to 8 to 13 years in prison or to death with two years' probation. This is the convicts' first trail.

According to the court investigation, the four child traffickers are Li Bifang, Jiang Chengpu, Yuan Guiyuan and Liu Weibing. The boys they abducted were all between two and six years old from Fuhai, a town within the city of Kunming. The convicts then sold the children in Puning, a city of south China's Guangdong Province. The crimes occurred between August 2003 and June 2004.

On June 6, 2004, Li Bifang and Yuan Guiyuan were captured by local public security officers when they were reselling the children.

After the abduction case was cracked by police, all the abducted 19 boys were returned to their parents.

(Xinhua News Agency May 19, 2005)