VIETNAM: 5 SENTENCED TO DEATH FOR DRUG DEALING, ADDING TO DEATH ROW WHILE EXECUTIONS DELAYED

July 16, 2013: A Vietnamese court has sentenced five people to death for dealing heroin, lengthening the country’s list of condemned criminals even as it struggles to obtain the chemicals needed to execute them.
Vietnam has not executed anyone since 2011, when it decided to switch from firing squads to lethal injection on humanitarian grounds.
But it cannot get the chemicals it needs because the European Union bans factories there from exporting drugs used in lethal injections and Vietnam has yet to produce the poisons locally.
The state-run Vietnam News Agency said Tuesday (July 16)  that three men and two women were convicted of dealing 78 kilograms of heroin at the end of a four-day trial Monday (July 15) in northern province of Bac Giang.
The report said four other women were sentenced to life in prison while four other defendants received 20 years in jail on the same charges in the case.
In Vietnam there are currently more than 500 people on death row. (Sources: AP, 16/07/2013)