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Communist Vietnam's secret death penalty conveyor belt: How country trails only China and Iran for 'astonishing' number of executions

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Prisoners are dragged from their cells at 4am without warning to be given a lethal injection Vietnam's use of the death penalty has been thrust into the spotlight after a real estate tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to be executed in one of the biggest corruption cases in the country's history. Truong My Lan, a businesswoman who chaired a sprawling company that developed luxury apartments, hotels, offices and shopping malls, was arrested in 2022.

Vietnam | 29-year-old woman sentenced to death for drug trafficking

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The High People’s Court in Ho Chi Minh City last Friday rejected an appeal and upheld the death penalty against a 29-year-old woman for having illegally transported narcotics from Cambodia into Vietnam for 19 times.

On February 27 last year, border guard officers at My Quy Tay Border Gate in Duc Hue District, Long An Province detected a bag containing 3,966 synthetic drug tablets weighing more than 1.5 kilograms, 997.32 grams of ketamine, and nearly 2 kilograms of methamphetamine on Nguyen Thanh Ngoc’s scooter when she was riding it from Cambodia to Vietnam, according to court documents.

Ngoc, 29, admitted to officials that Duong Ngoc Huynh Nhu, 33, living in Ho Chi Minh City’s Binh Thanh District had paid her VND5 million ($215) to carry the said drugs from the Cambodian province of Svay Rieng to Duc Hue District and hand over them to Le Hoang Vu, 41, living in the city’s Phu Nhuan District.

Ngoc was arrested at My Quy Tay Border Gate before she could deliver the drugs to Vu.

The Long An woman also confessed that she had helped Nhu transport drugs from Cambodia into Vietnam for 19 times, from November 2018 until she was arrested, and had been paid VND182 million ($7,800) in total.

She already spent the entire remuneration on personal expenses and paying off her debts, Ngoc said.

The Provincial People’s Court of Long An handed down a death sentence on Ngoc on charges of illegally transporting narcotics on July 10.

Ngoc pleaded guilty to all charges but she lodged an appeal for a commutation of the penalty.

However, the judge panel stated that the first instance judgment of the Provincial People’s Court of Long An was reasonable, arguing Ngoc had trafficked drugs in large quantities many times, so it was necessary to give her a strict sentence.

Therefore, the High People’s Court in Ho Chi Minh City rejected Ngoc’s appeal and upheld the capital punishment for her.

Source: Khmer Times, Staff, October 25, 2020


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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
Location: Vietnam
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