Tibetan lama Tenzin Delek Rinpoche has died in prison 13 years into serving a sentence for what human rights groups say were false charges that he was involved in a bombing in a public park. He was 65.
Relatives were informed of the death Sunday, New York-based Students for a Free Tibet said Monday. Police in Sichuan province in southwest China confirmed the death but declined to give further details.
Tenzin Delek was arrested in 2002 in relation to an April 3, 2002, blast in Chengdu city that injured three people. He was sentenced to death on charges of crimes of terror and incitement of separatism a few months later. His death sentence was commuted to life in prison in 2005, and later to 20 years' imprisonment.
He was being held in a prison in Dazhu county, in Sichuan province, which borders the Tibetan region.
A woman from the Public Security Bureau in Dazhu confirmed that Tenzin Delek died Sunday. She refused to identify herself.
Students for a Free Tibet said that his family members had been informed by police in Chengdu city, in Sichuan province, on Sunday, but were not told how he died.
Last year, they had applied for medical parole for him on the grounds that he suffered from a heart condition, high blood pressure, dizzy spells and problems with his legs that had caused him to fall on a number of occasions.
Born in 1950 in a Tibetan area of Sichuan, Tenzin Delek stayed in India from 1982 to 1987 to study under the Dalai Lama.
During that time, the Dalai Lama recognised Tenzin Delek as a tulku, or a reincarnated lama.
