An uncle and nephew were sentenced to death on Monday for detonating homemade bombs in two Internet cafes in the eastern city of Hefei, killing two people and injuring four others.

Unemployed Lu Dongming, 45, and his 24-year-old nephew Lu Kuan were found guilty of plotting and executing the explosions in May at the Haoyu and Juxing Internet cafes in an attempt to blackmail other Internet cafes, according to the ruling of the Intermediate People's Court of Hefei in east China's Anhui province.

Lu Dongming's son, 19-year-old Lu Hong, was adjudged to be an accessory to the crime and was sentenced to ten years in prison..

The three defendants were also ordered to pay 260,000 yuan (about 32,911 U.S. dollars) to the owners of the cafes. The court also deprived them of political rights for life.

Lu Kuan plans to appeal to a higher court but the other two accepted the judgement.

Short of money, Lu Dongming came up with the idea to detonate the bombs in the two Internet cafes in March. He planned to tell other cafes that they would be subject to the same fate if they failed to pay him large sums of money, according to the police.

The blasts occurred at 21:36 and 21:56 on the rainy evening of May 5.

Lu admitted to the police that they had put the homemade time bombs by the rear windows of the two Internet cafes.

They also admitted that before the May 5 blasts, they had plotted to blow up another Internet cafe in Hefei, but they abandoned the plan after they deemed it too impractical.

Source: Xinhua