FAMILY and friends of the murdered Tibetan monk who founded a world famous Scottish Buddhist monastery have appealed for clemency after the two men responsible for his killing were sentenced to death in China.

Court documents show that Choje Akong Tulku Rinpoche, who lived in Scotland and founded the Kagyu Samye Ling monastery in Eskdalemuir, Dumfries and Galloway, was stabbed over 40 times, as he, his nephew Loga and his assistant Chime Wangya, were attacked in the Chinese city of Chengdu over what police said at the time was a financial dispute.

The Samye Ling centre was the first Buddhist monastery to be founded in Europe. Students included David Bowie and Leonard Cohen.

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The murder trial at Chengdu’s Intermediate People’s Court on Wednesday, heard the lama, who was among the first spiritual leaders to teach Tibetan Buddhism to followers in the West, had been killed, after a former resident at Samye Ling came to his house demanding 2.7 million yuan (£270,000).

The court heard that Thupten Kunsal, a sculptor from the Tashi Gonsar Gong monastery in Dege in east Tibet, had travelled to Chengdu, where the lama had a home, to demand payment for several statues he had carved during a five year stay in Scotland.

The court verdict indicates that the lama was stabbed around the head, neck and parts of the chest and abdomen. His nephew was stabbed up to 20 times and his assistant nine times.

One of those sentenced was Thubten Kunsal, who had been an artist at the Scottish monastery between 2002 and 2011, the Chengdu intermediate court said in a statement.

He and another man, Tsering Paljor, were sentenced to death for stabbing the three men in a confrontation at the lama's Chengdu home over wages that Thubten Kunsal said he was owed. A third man was sentenced to three years in jail for his part in the killing.

Carlo Luyckx, former deputy mayor of Brussels and president of Belgium's Buddhist Union, who knew the lama for 42 years, said that there had been strong appeals for clemency.

Akong Rinpoche's brother, Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche, who is the abbot of Kagyu Samye Ling, Europe's biggest and oldest Tibetan religious centre, as well as the Karmapa – the head of the Kagyu school of Buddhism to which the victims belonged – both expressed their wish that the death penalty not be imposed on the defendants.

The lama's oldest son Jigme Tarap, director of the Edinburgh-based Akong Rinpoche Foundation, also called for clemency.

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Jigme Tarap with his father

In a message to Foundation supporters he quoted the words of his father: "If you forget everything I say, remember never to forget 'the greatest power is compassion'."

And he added: "However hard I wished bad fortune to happen to the killers of my father, I always think about what my father would say to me.

"The above quote sums it all up. I/we must find compassion for everyone, whatever they have done in their lives, be it good or bad. Our karma always catches us up."

Similar sentiments were echoed by Lama Yeshe Losal Rinpoche in a message to dharma students which further reveals the mindset of family members and followers.

He talked of having a 'bodhisattva attitude', which in Mahayana Buddhism is a term for anyone who is motivated by great compassion and refers to a human being committed to the attainment of enlightenment for the sake of others.

He said: "When I learnt the circumstances of my brother's death and the identities of those who killed him and his nephew and driver, I felt extremely sorry for them because it shows how one moment of misguided anger can ruin so many lives.

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Akong Rinpoche, left, pictured with his brother Yeshe

"So instead of feeling angry, I feel compassion for them and think about how much bad karma these misguided persons have created for themselves and others.

"I would like to let our dharma friends, who wish to do something for my brother and me, know that this is the time for forgiveness. We should all have the bodhisattva attitude of mind and feel compassion and forgiveness towards those responsible for Rinpoche's death. I have been able to forgive and this is how I was freed from my suffering.

"I would like all students to reflect that when we allow our negative mind to take over we become capable of doing evil things."

He concluded his message by saying: "I urge you to keep a compassionate and positive mind, and let us now work together to continue Rinpoche's activity."

After the verdict was announced followers echoed the sentiments of the family.

Brighton photography student Joe Taylor wrote on social media: "When I heard that the people who killed my friend and teacher Akong Rinpoche had been given the death sentence I felt physically ill and very distraught.

"I hope that somehow this decision can be reversed and that they can work through the karmic debt they have created whilst being alive. I do not believe for one instant that Rinpoche would have had any feelings of revenge as it was not in his nature. More senseless killing is not the way forward."

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The court previously heard that Thupten Kunsal, had travelled to Chengdu in order to demand payment for several statues he had carved during a five year stay in Scotland.

Luyckx, one of a group of four friends of the lama, who were in the court room as the trial proceeded said that Thupten Kunsal went to see Akong at his home five times in the weeks that he was in Chengdu.

“The first time he saw him he was wanting money, 2.7 million yuan, but Akong told him there was never any such agreement,” Luyckx said. “But Akong gave him 10,000 yuan to see a psychiatrist because he was complaining that bad spirits were following him.”

Thubten Kunsal and Tsering Paljor admitted involvement in the crime, according to statements by their lawyer, but argued the deaths were not intentional.

The verdict, posted by the court on social media, said the murders were "brutal" and that the suspects should be "severely punished in accordance with the law".

The court said Thubten Kunsal and Tsering Paljor would appeal. The third man had not decided whether to appeal.

Murder case awakens tensions between China and Tibet

Questions surrounding the murder of Choje Akong Tulku Rinpoche ahve highlighted the distrust many Tibetans have of the Chinese government, which has ruled Tibet with an iron first since "peacefully liberating" it in 1950.

Some exiled Tibetans, have been on social media speculating that there must have been a political plot behind the crime, though there is no evidence to suggest that.

Robbie Barnett, director of Modern Tibetan Studies at Columbia University in New York, who has followed the case closely, believes the court had carefully considered both the pleas and arguments made by the defendants and their lawyers, and the appeals for mercy.

He said this was demonstrated by the fact that the third defendant was recognised as not having been involved in the murder itself, although it had been assumed by outsiders at the start of the case that he was implicated in the murders. His three year sentence was for helping the perpetrators escape.

Although he still received a prison sentence, most of which he has already served, this indicated some discrimination and care by the court, he said.

"The long delay between the trial - which began in August 2014 - and the sentencing was very unusual in Chinese terms, and suggests that there was extensive discussion among the authorities about the sentences, probably at a rather high level, and that could only have been because of the appeals for clemency, as in any other case in China, death sentences for such a horrific crime would have been effectively automatic and announced immediately," said Barnett.

"So this suggests that, although nothing has been said publicly about them, the appeals for clemency were taken unusually seriously by the Chinese authorities.

"If the death sentences had been commuted, given the extraordinary violence of the crimes committed and the lack of any mitigating circumstances to justify them, I think it might have been seen in China as shocking or unreasonable."

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Choje Akong Tulku Rinpoche

He said a further decision would be expected by the Supreme Court, the highest court in mainland China, which in the last few years had been required to review any death sentence issued by a lower court in China.

The British Embassy in China said it was aware of the sentencing and that the British government had formally communicated its opposition to the death penalty to the Chinese government during the course of the trial.

Lama Yeshe said just after the murders that he believed the killers of his brother were trying to steal funds from a charity set up to help the hungry, sick, orphaned and poor.

He added that he believed the killers' target was funds bound for Zurich-based Rokpa International, a charity co-founded by his 73-year-old brother providing aid and relief in Tibetan areas of China, Nepal, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

His brother was about to embark on his annual tour, visiting the projects of Rokpa - the charity he founded which provides education and healthcare to those living in the most remote areas - to distribute funds raised during the year.

Akong was born in Tibet in 1939, but fled the country twenty years later, taking UK citizenship, and founded his monastery at Eskdalemuir in 1967.