Chinese court jails woman for bomb hoax on Xinjiang-bound plane

BEIJING - A Chinese court jailed a woman for three years and two months for falsely claiming she would detonate a bomb on a plane flying to Urumqi, the restive capital

of Xinjiang region near the Central Asian border, Xinhua news agency said on Wednesday.

The 28-year-old woman, was found guilty of a terrorist hoax and forging an identity card, after she passed a note to fellow passengers on an Oct 13, 2011 flight claiming she had the explosive material TNT on the plane, Xinhua said.

Urumqi, on the border with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kazahkstan and Russia, is home to the ethnic Uighurs, a portion of whom are not happy with the Chinese rule. Muslim hardliners there want to establish an independent state called East Turkestan.