Chinese courts have convicted 12,796 people in connection with 1,171 cases of organized crime since the beginning of 2006, a senior official of the Supreme People's Court (SPC) said Tuesday.

Around 6,700 people convicted in more than 720 of the cases had exhausted the appeals process, Gao Jinghong, director of the SPC office on gang crime crackdown, told a news briefing.

More than 3,100, or 46 percent of them, received prison terms above five years, life imprisonment or even the death penalty.

The figures related to all cases of organized crime handled by law enforcement agencies during a nationwide campaign from the start of 2006 until the end of July this year.

Liao Jinrong, deputy director of the criminal investigation bureau of the Ministry of Public Security, said the police had detained more than 89,000 people allegedly involved in organized crime in the campaign.

The police had investigated 1,267 organized crime cases and broken up more than 13,000 gangland organizations. More than 400 of them were involved in the construction, mining, transportation and wholesale sectors and the proceeds exceeded 4 billion yuan (588 million U.S. dollars).

They investigated more than 108,000 organized crime cases, including 419 homicide and 10,088 assault cases,

Police also seized more than 2,700 guns, he said.

Source: Xinhua