Two former Chinese defense ministers have been sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for corruption, in one of the most severe punishments handed down to senior military officials in recent years.

Reuters reported that Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu received the suspended death sentences on May 7 following graft convictions by China’s military court, according to state media.

The ruling underscores the depth of President Xi Jinping’s long-running anti-corruption campaign within the armed forces, the outlet said.

According to the official Xinhua News Agency, Wei was convicted of accepting bribes, while Li was found guilty of both accepting and offering bribes, based on court documents.

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Both men were also stripped of their political rights for life and ordered to forfeit all personal property.

Under Chinese law, a death sentence with a two-year reprieve is typically commuted to life imprisonment if the individual does not commit further crimes during the suspension period.

In this case, the penalties will be reduced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole or further commutation after the reprieve period ends.

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Wei Fenghe, 72, served as China’s defense minister from 2018 to 2023, while Li Shangfu, 68, held the post for only a few months as his successor.

Both men were former state councillors and members of the powerful Central Military Commission (CMC), the top military leadership body chaired by Xi.

They also previously led the People’s Liberation Army’s Rocket Force, a key branch established in 2015 as part of Xi’s sweeping military reforms.

The Rocket Force oversees China’s nuclear arsenal as well as its conventional missile systems, making it one of the most strategically significant arms of the military.

The sentences signal an escalation in Xi’s campaign to root out corruption in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), a drive that has targeted senior officials since he took power in 2012.

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The crackdown intensified in 2023, when investigations reached the Rocket Force and other elite units.

Both Wei and Li were expelled from the ruling Communist Party in June 2024.

Singapore-based security scholar James Char told Reuters the sentences were the harshest imposed on members of the Central Military Commission in recent history.

"That Wei and Li have been commuted to life imprisonment without parole or commutation underlines the severity of their offences," he said.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a London-based think tank, had previously warned that the ongoing purges could be weakening China’s military command structure.

The organization said the campaign may have created disruptions that could affect the readiness of the country’s rapidly modernizing armed forces.

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australia’s most decorated living veteran, Ben Roberts-Smith, walked free on bail from a Sydney prison on Friday, 10 days after he was charged with war crimes in the killings of five people while serving in Afghanistan.

Judge Greg Grogin granted Roberts-Smith bail in a Sydney court around five hours earlier, ruling the former Special Air Service Regiment corporal had established exceptional circumstances to justify his release from custody. Prosecutors had opposed bail and argued there was a risk that Roberts-Smith would flee Australia or interfere with witnesses and evidence.

Roberts-Smith, 47, was arrested on April 7 and charged with five counts of war crime murder involving the deaths of five Afghans in Uruzgan province in 2009 and 2012.

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Australian law defines war crime murder as the intentional killing in a context of armed conflict of a person who is not taking an active part in the hostilities, such as a civilian, a prisoner of war or a wounded soldier.

Roberts-Smith was driven away from Sydney’s Silverwater Correctional Complex late Friday apparently wearing the same clothes he wore when police escorted him from a commercial airliner at Sydney Airport last week, news media images showed.

Roberts-Smith was awarded both the Victoria Cross and Medal of Gallantry for his service in Afghanistan and is only the second Australian veteran of the Afghanistan campaign to be charged with a war crime.

The charges follow a military report released in 2020 that found evidence elite SAS and commando regiment troops unlawfully killed 39 Afghan prisoners, farmers and other noncombatants. Around 40,000 Australian military personnel served in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2021, of whom 41 were killed.

Similar allegations against Roberts-Smith were found credible in a civil court case in 2023 when a judge rejected his claims that newspaper articles defamed him.

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At that trial, Roberts-Smith testified he had never killed an unarmed Afghan and denied ever committing a war crime. He claimed he has been the victim of spiteful fellow soldiers’ lies and of others’ envy of his medals.

But while the civil court found the war crimes allegations were mostly proven on a balance of probabilities, the war crime murder charges would have to be proved in a criminal court to a higher standard of beyond reasonable doubt.

Roberts-Smith is accused of personally shooting dead two victims. He allegedly ordered subordinates to shoot the other three victims.

In opposing bail, prosecutor Simon Buchen described the charges against Roberts-Smith as "among the most serious known to the criminal law."

Buchen said Roberts-Smith had been "on the cusp of relocating overseas" without telling authorities when he became aware that prosectors were considering charges.

Roberts-Smith had made "advanced plans to relocate overseas. Consideration was being given to moving to various destinations overseas," Buchen told the court.

Roberts-Smith faces a potential maximum sentence of life in prison on each conviction. He has yet to enter pleas.

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Defense lawyer Slade Howell told the bail hearing Roberts-Smith’s case "may properly be described as exceptional in the sense that it is out of the ordinary."

"The use of domestic courts to prosecute alleged war crimes committed by a highly decorated Australian soldier deployed overseas repeatedly by the Australian government to fight a war on its behalf is unprecedented and is uncharted legal territory of the common law of this country," Howell said.

Howell also said Roberts-Smith’s "proceedings will be beset by a multitude of delays, many of which are peculiar to these proceeding."

Potential delays could arise if prosecutors decide to charge one or more of Roberts-Smith’s fellow veterans, some of whom now live overseas, Howell said.

Roberts-Smith took part in the bail hearing by video link from prison and spoke only when asked by the judge to confirm that he could see and hear proceedings.