One of China's highest-ranking Uighur officials and the former head of the troubled northwest Xinjiang region was sentenced Monday to life in
prison over graft charges, a court said.
It is among the most high-profile cases in President Xi Jinping's sweeping campaign against corruption in the ruling Communist Party, which critics have compared to a political purge.
Nur Bekri, an ethnic Uighur who was most recently head of China's national energy administration, pleaded guilty to accepting over 79 million yuan ($11.2 million) worth of bribes over the course of twenty years, according to the Shenyang Intermediate People's Court in northeast China.