A Chinese farmer was sentenced to seven years in jail Thursday by the local court in Qingdao, a city in eastern China's Shandong Province, for exhorting money from popular supermarkets through bomb threats.

According to Shibei People's Court, from July to November 2004, the 26-year-old Xu Weituo had threatened seven shopping malls and supermarkets in major cities demanding a total of 1.05 million yuan (126,964 US dollars). The stores included Carrefour in Beijing, Beijing Lufthansa Center and Hualian Shopping Mall in Shanghai.

The court said Xu ordered the shops to transfer the money to three bank accounts he had opened under the pseudonym Li Wei or he would set off the bomb that had been planted in the shops.

Police found no bombs and have said Xu had made only empty threats.

Xu was among a handful of people making bomb threats during the week-long National Day Holiday last October, when police in major cities such as Beijing were on high-level terror alert to guarantee the safety of crowded public places like hotels, supermarkets and tourist attractions.

More than 20 bomb threats were reported in Beijing alone in the two months since last October, according to the Beijing News. The newspaper warned that the escalating terror threats in China had reached a new high and might dampen the hard-earned social stability.

The court said police tracked down Xu after he blackmailed a supermarket in Qingdao last November. He was later arrested at home in Weifang on Nov. 26, 2004.

Judge Zheng Zhaofang found Xu guilty of extortion but gave him a lenient sentence because Xu only succeeded in extorting 32,000 yuan from the shops and was well behaved during detention.

"I saw people blackmail with bombs on television and in books, so I just followed them," Xu was quoted as saying by a Qingdao local newspaper last week when the trial opened.

"I made the threatening calls far away from home and never thought the police could track down on me here," Peninsular Metropolitan Daily quoted him as saying.

Xu did not appeal after the verdict was announced, the court said.

Source: Xinhua