A local court said that US citizen Shadeed Abdulmateendos was sentenced to death in China on Thursday for killing his 21-year-old Chinese girlfriend, who wanted to end her relationship with him.

Abdulmaen told the People’s Court of Ningbo (east), the city where the crime was committed, that she met her victim when they started dating in 2019.

In May 2021, the young woman told her then-boyfriend that she wanted to end the relationship. According to the same sources, the accused did not accept the victim and verbally threatened him.

A month later, they met at a bus stop, where the Americans stabbed the young woman in the neck and head. She couldn’t stand the wounds and died.

Speaking of “deliberate revenge”, the court said, “The defendant was sentenced to death for willful murder.”

The number of people executed each year in China is a state secret, but it is rare to sentence a foreign accused to death.

The US embassy in Beijing, sought by AFP, has yet to comment on the sentence.

In 2015, China reduced the number of crimes that could merit the death penalty from 55 to 46. These include separatism, willful murder, rape and drug trafficking.