Vietnam sentences six to death for drug trafficking
HANOI - A Vietnam court has sentenced six people to death and three others to life in prison for trafficking $1.6 million worth of ecstasy pills and heroin from Cambodia to Vietnam, state media reported Saturday.
Another man was sentenced to six years in jail Friday at the end of a three-day trial of the gang, who are all Vietnamese, the Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper said.
The court in the southern province of Tay Ninh, which borders Cambodia, heard the group had smuggled 228 lb of heroin and 606 ecstasy pills into Ho Chi Minh City over two years until June 2003.
Trafficking 1.32 lb of heroin is punishable by death by firing squad or life in jail in the communist country.
The newspaper said three other gang members, two Cambodians of Vietnamese origin and a Cambodian border guard, remained at large.
Wednesday, Vietnam's appeal court sentenced to death five people, including a U.S. passport holder, for smuggling heroin to Vietnam from the Golden Triangle and Cambodia, and shipping the drugs to Japan by sea and air.
Reuters - June 19, 2004.
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