Jakarta Globe – AFP, Jan 20, 2015
Hanoi. A Vietnamese court has sentenced eight members of a smuggling gang to death for trafficking heroin and five others to life in prison, state media said on Tuesday.
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| Vehicles file the road in front of Hanoi’s opera house where a large open-air stage is being prepared for a New Year’s Eve concert in downtown Hanoi on Dec. 31, 2014. (AFP Photo/Hoang Dinh Nam) |
Hanoi. A Vietnamese court has sentenced eight members of a smuggling gang to death for trafficking heroin and five others to life in prison, state media said on Tuesday.
The court
in the northern province of Hoa Binh also jailed 17 other defendants — all
Vietnamese members of the same gang — to between six and 20 years in prison
after a two-week trial that ended Monday, the state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper
said.
The ring
had smuggled more than 200 kilograms of heroin into Vietnam before their arrest
in 2011, the report said, without specifying where the heroin was sourced or
how long the group had operated.
Communist
Vietnam has some of the world’s toughest anti-drug laws. Anyone found guilty of
possessing more than 600 grams of heroin, or more than 20 kilograms of opium,
can face the death penalty.
Convictions
and sentences are usually revealed only by local media, which is strictly under
state control.
The
Vietnamese rulings come after Indonesia’s execution of foreign drug offenders
on Sunday triggered international condemnation.
Brazil and
the Netherlands recalled their ambassadors after Jakarta put to death two of
their citizens along with four other drug offenders from Vietnam, Malawi,
Nigeria and Indonesia.
Vietnamese
state media reported that Hanoi had requested clemency for the executed
citizen, but the official reaction was unclear.
In January
2014 authorities sentenced 30 drug smugglers to death in Vietnam’s largest-ever
narcotics case, involving scores of defendants and nearly two tonnes of heroin.
Vietnam has
also sentenced dozens of foreigners to death for drug offenses, but it has been
decades since a foreign national was executed in the country.
Agence France-Presse
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