Beijing to reward terrorism whistleblowers

BEIJING - Police in Beijing announced on Friday informants who expose terrorist plots will be rewarded.

The scheme will be effective from March 1 this year, according to the Beijing municipal public security bureau.

Those who provide extremely important information that contributes significantly to the prevention or investigation of violent terrorist activities will be rewarded with at least 40,000 yuan (6,539 U.S. dollars), according to the bureau.

Whistleblowers can call the police hotline 110, send a message or e-mail to Beijing police's official microblog or report to the police face-to-face, it said.

Anonymous whistleblowers whose identities could not be confirmed will not be rewarded, it said.

Beijing police will protect the safety of the informants, according to bureau.

Terrorism is a rising risk for the capital city with a population of more than 20 million.

A group of terrorists from northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region carried out an attack on October 28 last year in Tian'anmen, an iconic place in Beijing with high-level security.

Usmen Hasan, his mother, Kuwanhan Reyim, and his wife, Gulkiz Gini, drove a jeep with a Xinjiang plate into a crowd of people at noon on October 28, killing two people and injuring another 40, according to the Beijing police.

The jeep crashed into a guardrail of Jinshui Bridge across the moat of the Forbidden City. The three people in the jeep died after they set gasoline inside the vehicle on fire, according to the police.

Police found gasoline, equipment full of gasoline, two knives and steel bars as well as a flag with extremist religious content in the jeep.