Vietnam sentences Australian to death

September 18, 2007

An Australian man of Vietnamese origin has been sentenced to death for heroin trafficking in a Ho Chi Minh City court, a court official said.

Tony Manh, 40, of NSW, was convicted of trafficking 0.948 kilograms of heroin at the one-day trial, Phan Tanh, deputy head of the People's Court in Ho Chi Minh City, said.

Manh was sentenced to death and ordered to pay a fine of 50 million dong ($A3,755).

Manh was arrested in March after security officers at Tan Son Nhat airport in Ho Chi Minh City found the drugs hidden on his body as he was about to board a plane to Sydney.

The official Vietnam News Agency reported that Manh was paid $US10,000 ($A12,020) by a Vietnamese to smuggle the drug into Australia.

The counsellor at Australia's Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City, Graham Pearce, said a representative from the consulate attended the trial, but declined to comment.

Tanh said the court would put on trial two other Australians of Vietnamese origin on Thursday, also on charges of heroin trafficking.

There was no suggestion the cases were connected to Manh's.

"Recently, the fact that many Australians of Vietnamese descent are involved in trafficking heroin from Vietnam to Australia has become a phenomenon," Tanh said.

"City authorities have been trying their best to stop this practice."

Several Australians of Vietnamese descent have been arrested for trafficking heroin to Australia from Vietnam in recent years and at least five were sentenced to death.

None of the sentences have yet been carried out.

In May, a Vietnamese Australian on a Sydney-bound plane vomited a nylon bag of white powder suspected to be heroin, causing the plane to return to Vietnam.

At the same airport in Ho Chi Minh City in February, an Australian woman was arrested after being caught with 1.5kg of heroin in her luggage.

Vietnam has some of the world's toughest drug laws.

Possessing, trading or trafficking more than 600g of heroin or 20kg of opium is punishable by death or life in prison.

About 100 people are sentenced to death in Vietnam each year for drug-related offences.

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