Seventeen defendants were given sentences Tuesday ranging from three years to life in prison in the first trials of participants in deadly unrest last month in the Tibetan capital, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.
The sentences were handed down by the Intermediate People's Court of Lhasa, Xinhua said.
Protests against Chinese rule in Tibet escalated into rioting on March 14 in Lhasa, where shops belonging to ethnic Han Chinese were looted and set on fire, dpa reported.
The Chinese government said 18 civilians and a police officer were killed in the rioting in Lhasa, but the Tibetan government in exile said about 140 people were killed in the demonstrations and Chinese crackdown, most of them Tibetans shot by Chinese police.
