BEIJING, Aug 25: Seventeen Chinese have been charged with running guns from Pakistan in one of the largest arms-smuggling cases in China’s history, state media said on Thursday.

The defendants, who went on trial on Tuesday in the remote western province of Qinghai, neighbouring Tibet, are accused of buying more than 900 guns and 1,500 gun accessories in Pakistan, the China Daily said.

They were sold in Kashgar, in China’s restive far-western region of Xinjiang, and in Xining, capital of Qinghai, the China Daily reported.

It was not clear whether the guns were headed for Muslim separatists in Xinjiang, who have been fighting for decades for an independent “East Turkestan” homeland and whom Beijing calls terrorists, or to meet demand amid a growing wave of violent crime that has come with China’s economic reforms.

Privately owned firearms and explosives are illegal in China but are still made in many underground workshops.

China has long been Pakistan’s main source in legitimate arms trade and the two sides are producing a fighter aircraft together.

The trial in Qinghai was scheduled to finish on Saturday and sentences should be passed within two weeks, the report said. Some defendants could face the death penalty, it said.—Reuters