VIETNAM: COURT UPHOLDS WOMAN’S DEATH PENALTY FOR TRADING DRUGS

September 13, 2012: The appeal court of the Supreme People’s Court in Ho Chi Minh City upheld the death sentence of a woman convicted of illegally trading drugs.
At the appeal hearing for 30-year-old Le Thi Thu Thao, the court rejected her appeal, in which she claimed that she had not been the leader of an 11-member ring that trafficked drugs from Cambodia to Vietnam.
Thao told the court that her de facto husband, Tran Ngoc Thinh, 35, was actually the operator of the ring, but the court said her claim was not backed by any convincing evidence. In the first instance trial in April, Thinh was sentenced to life imprisonment for trading drugs and illegally keeping weapons but he did not appeal.
The court also turned down appeals by two other defendants: Pham Thi Hien, who received a life sentence, and Nguyen Thi Ngoc Le, who got 20 years in jail, both for the same charge as Thao.
Like Thao, Hien and Le had not provided any justification that could be considered as grounds for a commutation, the court said.
According to the indictment, the ring began operating in 2010, when Hien bought drugs, ecstasy, synthetic drugs and heroin in Cambodia and sent them to Vietnam to be sold. The ring had trafficked more than 10 kg of various kinds of drugs when it was busted in 2010. Following a tip-off from the public, the police monitored the ring’s activities and detained Thao and Thinh in September 2010 at their rented house in District 12 after finding a large amount of drugs there. The police also seized a K59 gun that Thinh had bought in Cambodia. (Sources: Tuoi Tre, 14/09/2012)