~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
The Vietnam News

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[Year 2001]

Vietnam to try 38 people over bombing campaign

HANOI - Vietnam announced on Saturday it is to try 38 people for terrorism and anti-regime propaganda as it gave first details of a year-long wave of bombings and attempted bombings leading up to last year's 25th anniversary of the Vietnam War. The sabotage campaign, which involved 11 separate groups of infiltrators, was the work of the opposition Free Vietnam Movement led by US-based Nguyen Huu Chanh, an official daily said.

The outlawed opposition group used bases in Cambodia and Thailand to mount its wave of armed attacks, just one of which actually succeeded, the mass circulation Ho Chi Minh City youth paper, Tuoi Tre, said. It was the first time Vietnam's secretive communist authorities had given details of the arrests, even though some dated back as far as March 1999. The only previous official reference was a cryptic three-line announcement in the communist party daily Nhan Dan last August which said more than 40 saboteurs had been detained since March 1999.

But the revelation explained why Washington had warned US nationals to beware of sabotage attempts in the run-up to the huge official celebrations for the end of the war held in Ho Chi Minh City last April. The 38 defendants, who are soon to go on trial before the commercial capital's People's Court, were among a total of 50 people detained by the security services, Tuo Tre said.

Just three of the defendants were actually Vietnamese residents -- all of the others had infiltrated from abroad. One was a US resident: the others were all "common criminals" who had found refuge in Cambodia and Thailand after fleeing Vietnamese justice, the paper charged. The one successful operation the group had mounted was a grenade attack on a gathering of followers of the Hoa Hao -- a Vietnam-based reformist Buddhist sect -- in the Cambodian border province of An Giang last March. The two suspects, Le Than and Nguyen Thi Thu Thuy, had sought to "blacken the name of the Vietnamese state by suggesting it oppressed religious freedoms," the paper claimed, although it gave no details of any casualties in the attack. The gathering the paper referred to was actually organised by the sect's outlawed unofficial leadership and led to a wave of arrests as the authorities unsuccessfully sought to prevent it taking place. The paper also gave details of two attempted bombings.

In April 1999, two men it named as Son Tam and Danh Huong were detained while attempting to plant bombs in the Mekong delta province of Can Tho. And the same month defendants Chan Khiu and To Van Hong were arrested for attempting to plant bombs in a public park in Ho Chi Minh City. The paper also spoke of further attempted bombings in Can Tho province in June and July 1999 and again at unspecified locations between November 1999 and February 2000, although it gave no further details. The publicity around the trial is bound to complicate Vietnam's relations with Cambodia and Thailand. The paper said both countries had harboured bases for the sabotage campaign, although it acknowledged that Bangkok had expelled the Free Vietnam Movement's leader. Last year's first announcement that saboteurs had been arrested prompted an outspoken tirade against unspecified "imperialist countries" by Police Minister Le Minh Houng.

Both Cambodia and Thailand have taken some action against the Free Vietnam Movement in recent years, although it has rarely gone beyond deportation. In May 1998 Thai police announced that they detained 128 of the group's supporters in the Klong Yai district of Trat province, 385 kilometres (230 kilometres) southeast of Bangkok. But the only charges ever pressed were for illegal entry. And in 1996 and August 1999, Cambodian authorities announced they had deported Free Vietnam Movement members after arresting them for attempting to infiltrate men and weapons into Vietnam. However in November last year Phnom Penh announced it would prosecute Vietnamese-American Le Sun Bao after arresting him on suspicion of recruiting an armed group during US President Bill Clinton's landmark visit here.

Agence France Presse - February 4, 2001.