ETIM co-founder denounces terrorist group

Terrorist groups will use any cruel measures to launch attacks and kill innocent people, a convicted separatist said in a public declaration of remorse in Hotan, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, local news portal ts.cn reported on Wednesday.

Memetuhut Memetrozi, 41, a co-founder of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a UN-listed terrorist group, warned the youngsters not to be fooled by religious extremists as they usually posed as religious experts and launched terror attacks that endangered national security, ruined people's life, created social panic and harmed national unity.

Memetrozi was sentenced to life for the crime of separatism in February 2005 and is serving his sentence in the Xinjiang No.1 Prison in Urumqi.

China's foreign ministry had stated that ETIM orchestrated the deadly attack in Tiananmen Square on October 28, 2013, in which three attackers drove a jeep into a crowd of people, killing three and injuring 39 others. The three attackers died at the scene.

Memetrozi said that ETIM members did not conform to religious doctrines and were against humanity. They misinterpreted the Koran to recruit young Uyghurs to separate the country.

"The organization recruits people both at home and abroad. They kill old people and children in the attacks, even those who left the organization," said Memetrozi.

Driven by curiosity about religious knowledge, Memetrozi studied in an Arab-run normal school in Pakistan in 1992. After being influenced by books and videos about extremism, he went to a training base for rebel forces in Afghanistan in 1993 and received terror attack training together with several Uyghur extremists.

In 1997, Memetrozi reached out to Hasan Mahsum and co-founded the ETIM. Mahsum was the leader of the terrorist group and was killed by Pakistani forces in 2003.

Memetrozi confessed that religious extremism and separatism led him to commit horrible crimes and cause immeasurable losses.

He made an apology to the people who suffered from the violence and declared he was breaking completely with ETIM.