Defendant Zhang Zhi Hua after the trial

VIETNAM: CHINESE MAN SENTENCED TO DEATH FOR TRAFFICKING 11KG OF NARCOTICS

February 28, 2013: In Vietnam, the Ho Chi Minh City Supreme People's Court of Appeal rejected an appeal for penalty mitigation, sentencing defendant Zhang Zhi Hua, 52, Chinese national, to death penalty on charges of "illegal transportation of narcotics."
According to the indictment, at 7.30pm on February 1, 2012, at the Moc Bai joint control station in Tay Ninh province, the police checked the taxi number plates 51LD -9184.
Through inspection, the police detected passengers Zhang Zhi Hua carrying two bags containing 20 yellow nylon bags. Inside these bags were 120,000 tablets in pink and yellow colors, which were suspected as synthetic drugs.
According to the assessment results, these tablets are narcotics, with a total weight of 10.9 kg.
Zhang Zhi Hua confessed that in November 2011, a Chinese man named Vy, who lived in Cambodia, rented Hua to traffic drugs from Cambodia to China, but Hua refused because the delivery fee was too low.
After that, another Chinese man named Trinh, who is Vy’s friend and lived in Guangdong, China, called Hua, asking him to carry 120,000 tablets of drug from Cambodia to Vietnam and then to China with the delivery cost of $40,000. Hua agreed.
According to plan, Hua would receive the drugs from a Thai couple in Cambodia then going through the Moc Bai border gate, getting a taxi to Saigon and then to Hanoi and going through Quang Ninh to China.
However, the defendant was arrested at the Vietnam- Cambodia border. (Sources: english.vietnamnet.vn, 28/02/2013)